Ex-Spec Po presents Manaiakalani by D. Kealiʻi MacKenzie

Artist’s Statement: My work in speculative media, poetry in particular, has usually drawn upon the ways the mythic, legendary, personal, and cultural can intersect. I draw inspiration from my various cultural backgrounds, but my Kanaka Maoli (Native Hawaiian) ancestry in particular. I’m intrigued with the idea of Native Hawaiian steam punk, but have begun to open up to exploring concepts of Kanaka Maoli futurity through poetry. A few questions I keep in mind: We have lived and survived for over 1,000 years so what would the next few centuries look like? What does Native Hawaiian speculative work look like? In what ways does the legendary/mythic/spiritual interact with the present/past? What excites me most about speculative genres are the possibilities for different kinds of imagining. Other sources of inspiration include writers in the field: Samuel Delany, N.K. Jemisin, Neil Gaiman, Ursula K. LeGuin, Nedi Okorafor, Ken Lieu, and Katharine Kerr, to name but a small few.

Bio: D. Keali‘i MacKenzie is the author of the chapbook From Hunger to Prayer (Silver Needle Press, 2018). A queer poet of Kanaka Maoli, European, and Chinese descent; his work appears in, or is forthcoming from: Flicker and Spark: A Contemporary Queer Anthology of Spoken Word and Poetry, Home (Is)lands: New Art & Writing from Guahan & Hawaiʻi, homology lit, and The Ballard Street Poetry Journal. A past member of the Worcester Poetry Slam team, he has performed his poetry in such places as West Palm Beach, Florida; Decatur, Georgia; Madison, Wisconsin; and Madang, Papua New Guinea. A Poet-Facilitator with the Honolulu based non-profit Pacific Tongues, he received an MA in Pacific Islands Studies, and an MLISc, from the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa.