Caroline Sinavaiana-Gabbard

Caroline Sinavaiana-Gabbard is a Samoan writer and Associate Professor of Pacific literature at the University of Hawaii.[1] She was born in Utulei village, Tutuila, Samoa and now lives in the Manoa Valley in Honolulu.[2] Her critically acclaimed poetry and scholarship have appeared in national and international journals and her book of poetry - Alchemies of Distance - was published in 2002. The text weaves between prose and verse and communicates a search for a Samoan identity and path of development within a modern colonized world. In his review of Alchemies of Distance, Craig Santos Perez asserts that this text "transforms the distances of time, culture, memory, and migration into a poetry of witness"[3] New Zealand-based Samoan writer and poet Albert Wendt describes Sinavaiana-Gabbard's voice as "a new blend of Samoan, American, and widely ranging poetic and philosophical languages. A unique, vibrant, undeniable voice which shapes the now fearlessly with profound understanding and forgiveness".[4]

“ "I understood poetry as oxygen. And I wanted to breathe." [5] ”

References

  1. ↑ http://www.3ammagazine.com/short_stories/fiction/margaret_mead/page2.html
  2. ↑ http://www.tinfishpress.com/sina.html
  3. ↑ http://www.rattle.com/ereviews/sinavaiana-gabbard.htm
  4. ↑ Caroline Sinavaiana-Gabbard, “Introduction: a kind of genealogy”, Alchemies of Distance, (Suva: Institute of Pacific Studies, 2001), back cover.
  5. ↑ Caroline Sinavaiana-Gabbard, “Introduction: a kind of genealogy”, Alchemies of Distance, (Suva: Institute of Pacific Studies, 2001), p.11.