Date and Venue TBD

What is UPU? UPU is a body of poetry that comes from our Ocean. Its a collection of voices from a people who live on a sea of islands connected by the largest body of water on earth, know to us as Te moana Nui a Kiwa, or the Pacific Ocean. In many of the islands in our ocean, UPU means word. We’ve taken the words of 28 poets; ranging from young voices, international activists, top Literary prize winners, to Poet Laureates, major influences in Pacific Literature; combined it and arranged it to create a snapshot, a Vox pop of stories and perspectives from our Ocean. Stories like Hawaiians debating how they Cooked Captain cook, a young Maori trying to navigate their indigenous culture in an increasingly digital world, the joys that cans of SPAM have brought to Guam and other Americanised islands, a Polynesian woman’s rejection of Gaugain’s painting of Polynesian women, how a village boy in Niue seduced the missionaries wife, a plea from the Marshall Islands as they’re losing their homes to the rising sea and so much more.