Craig Santos Perez: Poetry as therapy and political speech (ep376)

Written By kamea chayne
“Poetry has always been a powerful space for healing, dealing with trauma, cultivating resilience in times of crisis or even depression”
— CRAIG SANTOS PEREZ

In this episode, we welcome Dr. Craig Santos Perez, an indigenous CHamoru from the Pacific Island of Guam. He is the co-editor of six anthologies and the author of five books of poetry and the monograph Navigating CHamoru Poetry: Indigeneity, Aesthetics, and Decolonization. He is a professor in the English department at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.

Some topics we explore in this conversation include a glimpse into the recent history of Guam and its Pacific Islander communities, the challenges of demilitarization and de-nuclearization amidst the global empires’ endless pursuit of domination, using poetry as political speech and literary therapy, and more.

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  • Episode-inspired artwork by Sneha

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Transcript:

Note: Our episodes are minimally edited. Please view them as open invitations to dive deeper into each resource and topic explored. This transcript has been edited for clarity.

Kamea Chayne: According to the 2010 census, the Chamorro People Indigenous to Guåhan or Guam and the Mariana Islands, are the most geographically dispersed Pacific Islander population in the United States. I wonder if you could lay the grounds for this conversation by first sharing a little about where you are from, and the series of colonization that your islands have been through, leading to its cultural erosion and the CHamoru language today considered as endangered.

Craig Santos Perez: Yes. As you mentioned, I was born on the small western Pacific island of Guam. And many people have never heard of this place. So when I started writing my poetry about my homeland, I did feel the need to kind of map and explain where Guam was, because I always was asked, where are you from?

When I said, I'm from Guam, it always surprised me that people didn't know where it was or couldn't even find it on the map.

And so, so much of my poetry is about mapping Guam and talking about our history, as well as my native CHamoru culture.

So Guam was first discovered by European explorers in 1521, and then it was the first Pacific Island to be colonized by European powers—Spain in particular. Guam would be a Spanish colony until 1898, when it became a US territory, which is a status that remains to this day. The native Chamorro population is from the Marianas, but as you pointed out, also have a history of migration and diaspora, mainly across the United States. Many Chamorros now live in California, Texas, and other states. We are quite dispersed considering that our homelands are in the far western Pacific. Some of us even live as far as New York City.

So that's a little bit of the background of Guam, its history and our people, which is the foundation and the beating heart of my poetry.

Kamea Chayne: Thank you so much for sharing that background.

And wars and militarism have played major roles both for the island's past and present day reality, continuing to contribute to and worsen a lot of the preexisting injustices and struggles that your people face. And many other islands in the Pacific, like those of Hawai'i where you now live, have shared similar fates in terms of being utilized by the United States for their strategic locations for military purposes.

On this note, what are some of the major impacts of militarism on the Pacific—on the bodies of your lands and the bodies of your peoples, and more-than-human beings that you think are important to highlight? And if it feels relevant here, why do you prefer a reframing from the Pacific Islands, to Oceania or the Sea of Islands?

Craig Santos Perez: This is a very important question. Guam was even militarized going all the way back to the 16th century, where the Spanish built fortifications there to help protect their galley and trade routes going from Europe to the Americas, then to the Philippines and parts of Asia. That history of militarization in the Pacific goes back centuries, and continues to this day. [It was] most violently expressed during World War Two, where the Pacific was a so-called "theater of war", mainly between the US and Japan. This militarization and [these] wars, as well as the ongoing violence that we've seen in the Asia Pacific region, have caused many impacts to our island.

One is the acquisition of land for military bases on Guam itself. About 30% of the island is occupied by different military bases. Unfortunately, the military presence also contaminates the land and water, either through weapons testing, nuclear waste or other kinds of chemicals related to militarization. Sadly, this contamination has caused high rates of cancer and other types of disease and illness, in not only the Chamorro people, but as you mentioned, also here in Hawai'i, which has been used, again, as a strategic military base.

Now in terms of, using that phrase, Oceania, that is also a way that other scholars of the Pacific have proposed to talk about our islands, not simply as small, isolated islands far out in this vast ocean, but actually as a sea of islands.

Oceania signals that these aren't just separate little dots on the map.

But actually a blue continent where all our homelands are connected by the ocean, thus giving our voices much more resonance and power, when it comes to especially speaking out against the impacts of militarism.

Kamea Chayne: On a lot of these islands, there have been growing movements of demilitarization.

And I am in support of demilitarization and denuclearization because I just cannot fathom how an increasingly militarized and weapons-equipped world will not ultimately end up in more devastating wars that will cause destruction at levels that we have never seen before. And at the same time, I know many who might ask, if the military power, supposedly 'on our side within these constructed borders or identifications of citizenship, gave up their arms and military bases and demilitarized, wouldn’t that just allow other political powers who are still playing this game of striving for global dominance and constantly upping their military powers and collection of weaponry, to have the means to take over?

In other words, and this is not at all a justification for continued militarization, but just a baffling broader question I know many have and that I don't have the answer to of how we might be able to even move beyond these games of power that lead to many islands like those in the Pacific, and my own home island of Taiwan in East Asia as well amidst the brewing cold war between the US and China, being used and valued mostly just for their strategic locations through the military lens.

I'd be curious to hear what thoughts or remaining uncertainties you might have on this front.

Craig Santos Perez: I agree with your politics 100%. And I, too, believe in the importance of demilitarization and denuclearization not only across the Pacific, but across Asia and your own homeland and around the world. As you mentioned, there [are] so many of us advocating for disarmament and peace, as the only way forward. And I deeply believe in this ethics of peace, even though one really can't argue against the idea that, yes, even if one nation demilitarizes, that does not guarantee that another nation will do the same. Nor does it guarantee that there will actually be peace.

But the way I think about peace is more as a horizon and [an] ethics and something that, nations need to come together to [do], [that they need to collectively] try to articulate ways of moving into the future. Because, as we can see, if we continue along this path of the proliferation of nuclear weapons, the continuation of forever wars, that this planet will not be inhabitable for us, not only thinking about the displacement of peoples from their homelands because of war, but also thinking about the amount of carbon emissions caused by the military and war itself. The planet is reaching its limits, in terms of being able to cope with the fossil fuel burning caused by war, and so on.

So my hope is that nations will see that in order to actually live on this planet, we must find ways to demilitarize and to live in peace, even though, we may have these long histories of conflict and tensions. This [is] just not sustainable any longer.

Kamea Chayne: That really resonates with me, and I think demilitarization starting from somewhere and anywhere and everywhere possible, is the only way to disrupt this growing cycle of violence and to reorient us towards the regeneration of life and collective wellbeing.

And I want to shift to your more recent book of poetry, which is Habitat Threshold, which begins with a poem about plastic, titled “The Age of Plastic”. I want to read a few lines from the piece:

Plastic keeps food, water, and medicine fresh—
yet how empty plastic must feel
to be birthed, used, then disposed
by us: degrading creators. In the oceans,
one ton of plastic exists for every three tons
of fish—how free plastic must feel
when it finally arrives to the paradise
of the Pacific gyre. Will plastic make
life impossible? Our daughter falls
asleep in a plastic crib, and I dream
that she's composed of plastic,
so that she, too, will survive
our wasteful hands.

[*Plastic is bolded each time it appears. See the poem formatted here.]

I really appreciate how multilayered this piece is in how it presents these contradictions and nuances, and also considerations for the experience of being plastic. And, it would be much easier for our listeners to be able to visualize this poem because of how you use things like bolded text or italics or the structure.

I would love to hear you expand on some of your creative intentions for this piece and what you wanted to convey through them when people read between the lines.

Craig Santos Perez: Thank you. I wrote that poem several years ago when my first daughter was born. And at the time I was also learning about the history of plastic, as well as its own proliferation and its ubiquity around the world, and in so many different products, related to my daughter—her plastic crib and plastic bottle and plastic toys. I started seeing plastic everywhere, because plastic is everywhere. And, here in Hawai'i, we see plastic even washing up along the beaches and collecting in the ocean. [It's] massive amounts of plastic, even outnumbering some of the marine life.

So as I was writing this poem, trying to address this issue of plastic pollution, I started thinking about what plastic must feel. Plastic is our creation in some way—you might think of it as a child of human invention, yet we pretty much throw it away and dispose of it. [I was] thinking about, what if we thought of plastic as a living being, as not just an empty material with no life, but actually something that is more-than-human, in a way. And with that in my imagination, plastic did take on life, and kind of a very sad life, of a child that was totally disposed and seen as just labor, for humans to take advantage of, exploit and then throw away when we were done with it.

For me, as a poet, I always try to bring out those complexities within everyday experiences and to defamiliarize what is familiar to us…

So that we might see its deeper meanings, symbolism and significance within our own human experience. So that's a little bit of a background about that poem and, thinking about the ways we can reimagine plastic and in turn, reimagine how we use products.

Kamea Chayne: In terms of some of the creative decisions that you made, I would love to hear you expand on that as well.

Craig Santos Perez: So as you point out, I used different colors of fonts. And basically I was thinking about how plastic will outlive us all. It never fully biodegrades. So I wanted to try to embody that in the form of the poem itself. The way I tried to capture that idea is by keeping the font of the word plastic black and then fading out the rest of the words into gray. Hopefully, the reader will see the poem and they'll see how the plastic will always be there. It's bold, it will never go away. Yet all the other words which tell the story about humans and animals—that will all fade into the background. As a poet, I don't just want to tell a story in the poem. I also want to create a formal experience for the reader to see, that will also capture the meaning of the poem.

Kamea Chayne: It certainly felt like a full experience for me when I engaged with it. We are going to come back to the power of poetry a little later but as “The Age of Plastic” and your collection of poetry at large suggest, there are a lot of these messy entanglements that do not allow for a pure way out.

And to bring militarism back in, plus tourism, which I understand to be the two major industries in Guåhan and Hawai'i and other islands in the Pacific, I recognize this messy entanglement in that so many have forcibly and systemically become integrated into and reliant on these very industries that have caused so much destruction and displacement.

And then there are also added layers of injustice when people make broad judgments against those who have been pulled to fill these roles as a means of survival—like those recruited into the military who might turn towards it for economic reasons, or those who now work in the tourism space and who might have felt the need to commodify place to earn a living, or on the plastics front, judgments against people who might need to consume a lot of plastic-packaged foods because their traditional lands and food sources have been taken away or compromised for all sorts of reasons.

I just wonder what else this stirs within you as we think about the messy and contradicting entanglements that many find ourselves a part of today and struggle with, knowing there's no way to easily reject or hit ‘exit’.

Craig Santos Perez: Yes, thank you. That was a really beautiful and articulate way to describe these messy entanglements, as you put it, whether it's militarism, tourism, plastic pollution and so on. I think you're exactly right. So much of our lives are entangled within these larger systems. We could think of capitalism as well, or the fossil fuel industry. These are the lives that we live within and we can never fully transcend, escape or 'exit', as you put it. And so, as individuals and collectives, we do need to find ways to critique, expose and try to transform and change the systems that we are entangled within, and, to be honest, that is strangling our lives and our planet.

As a poet and activist and scholar, I feel that my responsibility has been to raise awareness about these issues and to really highlight these complexities, as you put it. Ultimately, it's going to be up to individuals to make their own choices, and to find their own ethics and navigate their own lives through these complicated entanglements, whether they work in the tourism industry or are part of the military, or whether they're reaching to buy a bottle of plastic at the store. We make these choices every day. And, there's no easy answers and it's a constant struggle. But I think that it's what we have to do as poets and scholars and activists, is to really struggle within the system so that we can someday change them.

Kamea Chayne: I recently conversed with professor Rune Hjarnø, who focuses on Nordic mythology and animism. And he talked about the limitations of all of the climate reports that have been published in being able to move people emotionally and relatably and deeply in an embodied way. In that conversation, we explored understanding mythology as playing the role of building relations.

Here, through engaging with your work, I can't help but think about the potential of poetry in support of climate activism and social and cultural change as well, in how they more likely engage and spark emotions that texts with a language of objectification might have a more difficult time doing. Not to diminish their unique purpose, though, of course. But I would be curious to hear you speak more to what you see as the power and role of poetry as political speech and activation.

Craig Santos Perez: I agree with that as well. I think poetry, the arts, music, the humanities in general, really do have that power to humanize and to touch the emotions when speaking about various topics. And of course, poetry as political speech does similar rhetorical work, while also still tapping into two really deep personal emotions.

For me as a poet, it's been a space where I can comment upon these larger, whether they be social, political or historical issues, in a way that's really rooted in my own culture, my body, my family and my own personal experiences as well.

I think that makes the art form able to touch the listener or the reader on a deeper level, than other types of writing or reports or graphs or scientific data is not able to do.

And as you said, that doesn't diminish their value, but instead highlights the importance of collaboration and interdisciplinary storytelling and activism, so that we can all come together, bring our research, our arts, our songs, our poems, our dances to the streets so that we can inspire and empower the public.

Kamea Chayne: I want to connect this to your more specific focus as well, as your book Navigating CHamoru Poetry has shown how CHamoru poetry has been an inspiring and empowering act of protest, resistance, and testimony in the decolonization, demilitarization, and environmental justice movements of Guåhan. What more about this would you like to highlight?

Craig Santos Perez: For my dissertation research, I studied contemporary CHamoru poetry and partly I chose that topic because I just love poetry, it's my passion, and I wanted to read other CHamoru writers and learn about how they express our cultural identity and values. But one thing I started to notice in my research is how so many of the poems address political issues. Moreover, they were actually performed at public events and protests, or even published in newspapers or online and so on. To me, this really spoke to the power of poetry in our community to move audiences, to educate, to critique, and to protest.

Now, in my further research, I also found that this is not only true in CHamoru poetry, but it's true in Pacific Islander poetry and Native American poetry, Indigenous poetry. And of course, in many poetic traditions around the world. So that really solidified to me the value of poetry within these larger political movements, as well as, of course, social justice, cultural revitalization and environmental movements as well.

Kamea Chayne: I really resonate with your collections of poetry in how they kind of refuse to be simplifiable or summarizable, and also in how their forms taken together like we just touched on, also reflect, as I interpret it, the bigger messages you're trying to convey, so that there's also in a sense a meta poetry to engage with.

And, in addition to the emotional aspects, you also try to teach your students that "poetry is a powerful form through which to uncover and recover the ecological layers of a given place." How would elaborate on this for our listeners who may not have engaged with or been exposed to poetry in this way?

Craig Santos Perez: I teach a course called Ecopoetry here at the University of Hawai'i. And an important part of the course is reading, interpreting and analyzing poetry. But also I found that it's a great pathway through which students can not only learn about literature, but also develop their own environmental literacy. They can learn more about the layered ecologies of a place by writing poetry about that place.

Because writing poetry is not only about speaking from your emotions and experiences.

I often have my students research the place that we live or learn the names of trees or different kinds of streams and waters, and so on. They do that to write the poem, but in doing so, they're also learning more about the place that they live in.

And that's been a very powerful experience, to see that manifest in the classroom. In more recent years, I've been teaching more poetry about climate change because, as you know, it's it's an urgent issue. I've also found that by having students write poetry about climate change, that has also helped develop their own climate communication skills and climate literacy. For me, that really speaks to the power of poetry, not only to inspire us, but to help nurture our own ecological consciousness, which perhaps has been suppressed by our urban lives and our connection to technology...

Kamea Chayne: And in many ways culture influences our senses of politics. So, if we can transform and shift culture, that very likely could reorient people's values and politics as well.

Craig Santos Perez: Yes, I completely agree with you. So much of changing people's behaviors is about changing their imaginations. And in order to change the world, we need to be able to imagine new worlds and new futures. We could do that through poetry, through film, through novels, music and so on. I think oftentimes people lose touch with their imaginations and they fall into routines and systems that determine a certain pathway. Unfortunately, we are on a very dangerous pathway right now. So I think it's so urgent that we do transform the imagination so that we can then transform our ethics, our societies and the world itself.

Kamea Chayne: That's really powerful. And also, sometimes things can't be taught or simply told—they have to be felt and embodied, and as you say, we have to be able to imagine otherwise. So I think that's the beauty of what our engagement with poetry as activism might be able to inspire.

And also, I would love to explore the idea of literary activism as therapy. Personally for me, engaging with all forms of the arts and music and creative expressions have helped me to stay grounded and reminded of the beauty of humanity and the world even if they may be addressing very heavy topics. Although I do struggle with shedding the sense of guilt that I often have when these engagements feel more like a personal relief or solace for me and may not feel as directly 'productive' or impactful.

How have you thought through the idea of poetry or literary activism as a form of therapy? And how have you personally engaged with it to support your own healing?

Craig Santos Perez: For me, poetry has always been a powerful space for healing, dealing with trauma, cultivating resilience in times of crisis or even depression. I feel like poetry has become that space because it's where I can express myself, process my emotions, and try to articulate what I'm feeling. And as we talked about earlier, work out where I can imagine otherwise. A lot of poets talk about the therapeutic or cathartic powers of poetry, which is absolutely true. I felt that myself. It's helped saved my life in many ways throughout the years. And it's given me a safe space where I can feel the most vulnerable and human.

I see this in my students as well, when they're able to write a poem during a difficult time in their life and to really take [on] those emotions, [which] I think, if we [otherwise] let fester inside of us, can be very negative for our mental and physical health. But the poem and I think this is, of course, true for many of the arts, gives us something creative to do with those emotions so that those negativities don't become destructive.

It's that creative power that gives us some inspiration, empowerment and resilience so that we can continue to live in these difficult times and confront all the crises that we are unfortunately facing.

Kamea Chayne: I know I certainly feel inspired to write more poetry from engaging with your work and from this conversation.

And for many of our listeners who may experience anxieties from all sorts of socio-ecological pressures and worries, what are some invitations you might want to leave our listeners with, if people are curious to engage with poetry as creative or therapeutic expression?

Craig Santos Perez: Well, I think definitely for me, it's helped to keep a poetry journal. And as many other writers have done, to keep a journal, is that space where you can just write freely, you can be vulnerable and honest. You can try to articulate those anxieties, and express your feelings in a way [without] pressure. And it's not public—it's just for yourself. That would be my first tip.

And maybe someday the poem will feel like it's done and maybe you want to publish it and share it with others. While that may seem counterintuitive, what I found to be true is that, when I read poems that someone else has written, they often speak to me and I can see that someone else has maybe experienced what I'm experiencing, or they're going through the anxieties that I'm feeling. It definitely makes me feel less alone when I can share my work with others and have them relate to it, and when they can read others' work and feel that same connection.

Kamea Chayne: We are coming to a wrap for our main conversation. I want to leave this space open for you to share anything else that is on your mind that you'd like to leave with our listeners.

Craig Santos Perez: What I have in mind right now is a new publication that I co-edited. It's an anthology called Indigenous Pacific Islander Eco-Literatures, and it's a project that I've been working on with my co-editors for about seven years, and it's just published this year by the University of Hawai'i Press. This anthology features nearly 100 Pacific Islander writers from around our region writing about different environmental issues from land, water, trees, flowers, origin stories, climate change, environmental justice, and so much more. In editing this, I, of course, read the poems many times. And I feel so inspired by the voices of other Pacific writers speaking about these topics. I hope anyone listening to this episode will check it out and hopefully you, too, will be inspired by our voices.

*** CLOSING ***

Kamea Chayne: What has been an impactful book that you've read or a publication that you follow?

Craig Santos Perez: You've mentioned the phrase Oceania before, so I will mention an essay called “Our Sea of Islands” by the Pacific scholar named Epeli Hau'ofa. It's a very influential essay that first articulates the idea of Oceania, and it's one that has really reshaped my imagination of the Pacific.

Kamea Chayne: What is a personal motto, mantra or practice you engage with to stay grounded?

Craig Santos Perez: Hiking, here in Hawai'i. I've been going on these long hikes every weekend and climbing to the summits of the mountains here, walking through the valleys and streams, feeling the dirt and rocks and trees around me. That practice of hiking has really kept me grounded here, in the islands.

Kamea Chayne: What is your greatest source of inspiration at the moment?

Craig Santos Perez: My students. Our semester just started two weeks ago and I've just been really inspired by the students I have this semester and their passion for poetry.

Kamea Chayne: Craig, it's been a pleasure and an honor to speak with you. Thank you so much for joining me on the show and sharing your story and inspirations here with us. For now, though, what final words of wisdom would you like to leave us with as green dreamers?

Craig Santos Perez: Well, I don't have words of wisdom, but instead words of gratitude. I just wanted to thank you for having me and to thank all the green dreamers out there for putting together this show and for creating such a beautiful community. Thank you so much.

 
kamea chayne

Kamea Chayne is a creative, writer, and the host of Green Dreamer Podcast.

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