Noʻu Revilla, Poet (May, 2026)

This spring, we will welcome poet Noʻu Revilla to The Merwin Conservancy for a residency. During her time in residence, she will connect with our community through a Green Room program on Maui.

Born and raised on the island of Maui, Noʻu Revilla prioritizes aloha, gratitude, and collaboration in her practice. She is the author of Ask the Brindled, a National Poetry Series selection and winner of the Balcones Prize. Her work appears in World Literature Today, Michigan Quarterly Review, Lit Hub, Split This Rock, and elsewhere. Her poems have been adapted for dance, theater, and film productions throughout Oceania, and her poetry film Nānā i ke kumu was selected for the Smithsonian’s Mother Tongue Film Festival in 2026. Noʻu served as poetry faculty for Indigenous Nations Poets, facilitated poetry workshops at Puʻuhuluhulu University while standing with her lāhui to protect Maunakea, and teaches creative writing at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. She lives with her wife near the rippling waters of Kaʻelepulu.

During her residency, Noʻu will continue to develop the manuscript for her second full-length poetry collection. In the book, an ʻŌiwi woman is drowned at the height of sugar operations on Maui, brought back to life, and struggles with her resurrection. Known to the reader as Niece, she searches for answers about her death. Why was she drowned? Who killed her? What brought her back to life? Luckily, she is guided by a chorus of aunties who are invariably tender, petty, and revolutionary. In an early poem, the aunties declare: “Drought is an old war.” This poetry collection chronicles intergenerational stories of women, water, and power in Hawaiʻi. While illustrating the vexed and gendered legacies of colonization and extractive capitalism, the poems also craft space for Indigenous care, joy, and desire.