Akea Ishikawa

Kumulipo [excerpt]

O ke au i kahuli wela ka honua

O ke au i kahuli lole ka lani

O ke au i kukaiaka ka la.

E hoomalamalama i ka malama

O ke au o Makali’i ka po

O ka walewale hookumu honua ia

O ke kumu o ka lipo, i lipo ai

O ke kumu o ka Po, i po ai

O ka lipolipo, o ka lipolipo

O ka lipo o ka la, o ka lipo o ka po

                        Po wale hoi

                        Hanau ka po

Kumulipo [excerpt]

At the time of the turning the world burned 

At the time of the turning the celestial was clothed 

At the time of the turning the shadows of the sun were brought forth 

The light grew

At the time of summer night

At the time the slime took root. 

The darkness came from the sea 

Of the depths of the darkness was the depths of the darkness

The darkness of the sun was the darkness of the night 

Behind the sun was the god of night 

-Translated from Hawaiian by Akea Ishikawa

Kumulipo [excerpt]

At the time that turned the Earth 

And the time that turned the sky 

The light emerged 

The light grew

At the time of the summer night 

At the time that the slime became 

The darkness emerged from the sea 

The darkest of darkness 

And the darkness of the sun was the darkness of the night 

But behind the sun was the god of night 

-Translated from Hawaiian by Akea Ishikawa

Translator’s statement

My poem, the “Kumulipo,” was created to honor the birth of the Hawaiian prince Kalaninuiamamao. The poem, which is over 2000 lines long, details the lineage of the Hawaiian royal family and the Hawaiian creation story. The chant was created and memorized by a group of Hawaiian priests who recited the chant at ceremonies such as the festival of the god Lono. The excerpt I chose is the first epoch of the Kumulipo; it serves to set the scene for the rest of the poem by introducing what the world was like before creation began. 

In 1820 the arrival of protestant missionaries to the islands created a need for the Bible to be translated into Hawaiian . But translating the bible into Hawaiian presented an interesting problem: up until that point written Hawaiian didn’t exist. So to be able to write a Bible in a language that had never before been written and that was never meant to be written in, the missionaries 12 letter system that is still used to today: A, E, I, O, U, H, K, L, M, N, P, W. Written Hawaiian flourished, in 1942 literacy was so widespread that a law was passed saying that you needed to be able to read and write to get married, and by 1853 75% of the population of the islands was literate. But after the coup of the Hawaiian government in 1893 the language fell into steep decline. While imprisoned, the former Hawaiian Queen Liliʻuokalani created (among many other pieces of writing and music) what would come to be the most widely accepted translation of my poem, the Kumulipo. In 1896 the US government (who had taken control of the islands) passed a law making English the official language of what was now known as The Hawaiian Territory. By 2001 native speakers of Hawaiian made up just 0.1% of the state’s population.

When translating this poem I came face to face with the fact that Hawaiian was never intended to be a written language. Take a word like ho’omalamalama as a example, the suffix Ho makes whatever comes after it a verb, oma means take care w and lama means light when used twice lama means lots of light so literally translated this word means “to take care of lots of light. This was far too clunky for me to use the full forms of these words. Another problem that I encountered was the Hawaiian language’s use of negatives. Instead of saying something is bad the language says the thing with a suffix for that thing but bad. For example saying something that literally means the shadow of the sun was brought forth actually more roughly translates to “the sun was subdued”. When dealing with the negative suffixes I began to appreciate how poetic of a language Hawaiian is  and in the end I thought that saying the shadow of the sun was brought forth was perfectly poetic for the myth-like chant. In fact many of the issues that I mentioned like the positives and negatives in Hawaiian were so much that the literal translation made no sense. 

Throughout this process I really felt as if there was no way to translate this poem into English while maintaining the true meaning of the poem. Hawaiian was never intended to be a written language and this became crystal clear to me when writing this. It was kind of sad knowing that to translate this language meant sacrificing the integrity of the original structure. Once again because I really did not understand Hawaiian and because my literal translation was such a mess I didn’t feel like I could write two poems with different focuses. Instead I chose to instead of focusing on two different aspects of the poem to give myself two tries at trying to create a translation that captured the essence of the poem while preserving the chant and mythlike structure of the original poem 

In my interview with my grandmother, who started learning Hawaiian four years ago, we talked a lot about the ways in which she understood the culture of her island once she began learning Hawaiian. The goal was that using the dialogue from this interview I could create a blackout poem. I really wanted to capture the disconnect between her and the culture that she grew up in. But I also wanted to highlight the connection between her and her culture once she did learn more about her culture. Once she started learning Hawaiian it was much stronger. In the end I did this by telling the story of someone who wasn’t her, my blackout poem talks about someone who was forced away from Hawaiian, similarly to how she was forced away.  But once this person discovered Hawaiian they felt closer to the land and the culture. As the organization Antena said in their “Manifesto for Ultratranslation”: “Nothing is lost in translation. Everything was already lost, long before we arrived.” 

​​

Bibliography

“Hawaiian language, alphabet and pronunciation.” Omniglot, 13 July 2022, https://omniglot.com/writing/hawaiian.htm. Accessed 26 April 2023.

Martha Warren Beckwith (1951). The Kumulipo: A Hawaiian Creation Chant. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0-8248-0771-5. Archived from the original on 2010-06-29. Retrieved 2010-10-24.

Wikipedia. “Hawaiian language.” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawaiian_language#Suppression_of_Hawaiian. Accessed 26 April 2023.

Wikipedia. “Kumulipo.” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kumulipo. Accessed 10 April 2023.

*

Akeakamai Ishikawa doesn't quite know when he started writing poetry, but he's sure that the first time he put pencil to paper, he completed himself. He's always looked at the world as something beautiful, and believes that everything, down to the smallest walnut, should be treasured and loved. A regular practitioner of deep breathing and yoga, he loves nature and the outdoors more than anything, especially when he can enjoy the magnificence with his friends.