The Republic of the Marshall Islands holds 750,000 square miles of the Pacific Ocean and 70 square miles of land. Twenty-nine coral atolls (four uninhabited) and 5 islands, in two chains called Ralik and Ratak, Sunset and Sunrise, divide these 70 miles. Roughly half the population lives on the capital atoll of Majuro—more around Christmas time and the summer church events.
Urban Majuro has urban problems: homelessness, addiction, pollution, and culture loss. But islets with pristine beaches are just a twenty-minute boat ride through the lagoon away. The reefs have suffered severe bleaching in recent years but still support remarkable sea life. The last time I snorkeled at Eneko, the Parrotfish were crunching so loudly on the coral that it hurt my ears.
Back in
the urban core, organizations fight the loss of culture. The Cultural and
Historic Preservation Office, among other initiatives, has created
registries of historic places and traditional knowledge holders. I am not sure
what will happen with those projects now, as the director was recently charged
with misappropriation of public funds. I used to work with him; he was my first
informal teacher of Marshallese culture. Waan
Aelõñ in Majel (Canoes of the Marshall Islands) preserves knowledge
of boatbuilding and navigation. The national college where I work recently
approved an associate degree in Marshallese studies and employs a master weaver
to demonstrate and share the making of traditional jaki-ed mats.
Weaving and boatbuilding both carry analogies for Marshallese values embedded in their specialized vocabularies. Take jouj—kindness. Jouj also refers to the central part of a jaki-ed; it is made first and if done right, the rest of the mat will come out right. On an outrigger canoe, the jouj is a thin piece of wood on the bottom of the hull that holds the rest together. Kindness comes first. Small kindnesses make everything else work. The poetic language becomes more truly poetry in the roro. Today, these short chants, typically 4-6 lines in length, often open important events; historically they were used for navigation or to encourage strength for various kinds of labor. Most roro are associated with specific islands, and some require the permission of traditional leaders to perform.
Majuro has no poetry scene like you would find in a western city. There are no bookstores. There are a few coffeeshops, but Lazy Jays hosts trivia or paint and sip nights rather than open mics, and Annie’s Bakery is too small for events. Island Cafe closed when the building that hosted it, the older of two five-story towers in the country, became unsafe. I had heard that when everyone moved out, the building would be remodeled, but so far have seen no progress. This is not surprising given that it has only been a couple years, and the capital building stood fully abandoned for fourteen years before being demolished.
Poetry used to be integrated into biannual art shows organized by the volunteer group, Jambo Arts. Before Covid, this event would last all day, with mornings and afternoons dedicated to school groups viewing the art and participating in art-related activities. Evenings brought adults, alcohol as the event spaces were typically attached to bars, and performances. But most Jambo Arts volunteers were foreigners, and during Covid, many left while others took on extra responsibilities at work. With the borders closed, no new immigrants came. The events, and the group, faded away. Poetry, in the community, lives mostly in the schools. The late Cent Langidrik and his wife Justina published a book of Marshallese poems for children, translated into English by college students. The college offers creative writing courses in both English and Marshallese, but after years of associating writing classes with five-paragraph themes and other miserable approximations of essays, students hesitate to sign up for them.
The Marshall Islands’ best-known poet, Kathy Jetn̄il-Kijiner, moves frequently between these islands and other nations. She recently completed her Ph.D. at the Australian National University. She grew up on Hawai’i and the sense of cultural estrangement that resulted is an important theme in Iep Jāltok: Poems from a Marshallese Daughter, the first book of poetry published not only by her but by any ri-Majol. In 2014, she performed “Dear Matafele Peinam,” a poem to her daughter, in which she promises to fight for her islands against sea level rise, on the floor of the United Nations as part of the Climate Summit opening ceremony. I have to admit that I was skeptical of her representing the country instead of someone who had grown up in the islands. I had not yet read Epeli Hau’ofa’s “Our Sea of Islands,” in which he discusses the enlarged world created through the mobility of Pacific peoples, nor his “The Ocean in Us,” in which he explores how this same mobility has created the identity of Pacific Islander. Working with her at the college for a few years would also help me understand her identity and commitment to her people. I do think her work has become more powerful since the publication of her book, as Marshallese tradition increasingly influences its form rather than only its content.
Poetry in the Marshall Islands is both marginal and essential. I suppose that could be said of poetry anywhere in the world, but here it is typically thought of, when it is thought of, as removed from both the experience of modern life and the struggle to preserve traditional culture. Nonetheless, to the extent that poetry lives here, it is entwined with both modernity and tradition, like pandanus fronds fallen in the ocean, wrapped around sea grapes, and tossed by rising tides into the cracks of a sea wall.
Elizabeth Kate Switaj works at the College of the Marshall Islands on Majuro Atoll in the central Pacific. Her sequence, The Articulations, was published in 2024 as part of a tête-bêche from Kernpunkt Press; her chapbook, Serial Experiments, was published in 2025 by Alien Buddha Press. Her second full-length collection of poetry, The Bringers of Fruit: An Oratorio (11:11 Press, 2022), won the 2023 Whirling Prize.
