Arielle Taitano Lowe’s poetic journey began in her teens, as she grappled with the duality of her identity. She's part white and CHamoru and delves more into this experience in her debut book, Ocean Mother.
HOST INTRO: For K-P-R-G News, I’m Naina Rao. Arielle Taitano Lowe’s poetic journey began in her teens, as she grappled with the duality of her identity. She’s half white and half CHamoru. And she delves more into this experience in her debut book, Ocean Mother. It’s a collection of her poetry from 2011 to 2023. I sat down with Taitano Lowe to explore the poet’s creative process, the powerful messages behind her words, and how she got her start.
Arielle Taitano Lowe: So I really have to give credit to Dr. Keisha Borja-Quichocho-Calvo. I was in 11th grade at George Washington High School. And my favorite cousin took Keisha for drama at G-W. And she was just really adamant about ‘oh, yeah, you got to take B-Q. B-Q is like the person to take for creative writing, and poetry.’ And so by the time I entered my senior year, I took Dr. Keisha for drama, and creative writing. So it was really during her creative writing course, where she had introduced us to different Pacific Islander poets. And that was really a formative moment for me. I never really related to poets like Robert Frost, Emily Dickinson… They write beautiful stuff, but I never really read their work and thought, ‘Oh, I'm gonna write this or, I can do this.’
Naina Rao: It started in class. And now you have a book published. Why did you keep writing?
Arielle Taitano Lowe: After experiencing spoken word poetry and slam poetry, I just became deeply and utterly obsessed with writing. It just clicked for me. It was the one way I could really express myself. As a young person, growing up in Guam, right, we have a lot of challenges. We have our strengths, too. But for me, some of those challenges were poverty. Growing up as a girl and seeing I was treated different compared to my brother or my boy cousins, and didn't really have a space to just kind of talk about these things that I observed that I just felt were unfair or unjust or wrong. And writing it down just seems to be it for me. And I've just continued that practice of writing things down. A big reason why I transitioned from spoken word and slam poetry, to written poetry, which later became this book, just kind of realizing at the college level, there weren't really any other spoken word or slam poetry communities in Guam for adults. But we had University of Guam. We had the English literature program. And those courses really kept me grounded and kept me in the practice of writing. And again, I was just obsessed. So I just continued to look for different opportunities to write creatively. I looked up different writing retreats. The first one I actually left Guam to attend was in Oahu, Hawaii. I believed in my work, and I sought out mentorship.
Naina Rao: Your debut book, Ocean Mother, is a collection of your poetry from 2011 to 2023. And you deal with a lot of your identity, your duality being kind of like in between. I'm curious why the title of your book is called Ocean Mother. What's the story behind that?
Arielle Taitano Lowe: When I left Guam in August of 2020, to start my Ph.D. program, it was the first time I ever moved away from Guam. Born and raised here, I was 25 years old when I left for graduate school. And, you know, our word right for lovesick, is Mahålang. And it just describes this deep and awful ache in your heart when you miss someone or you miss something so much. And for me, that was Guam. Native Hawaiian culture, they have the term Aloha ʻĀina, this belief in just a magnetic connection to the earth. And you can only love other people through the island that you're born on and that you love on. And so when I left, it was just such a painful thing. And the only thing that could soothe that for me was going to the ocean. So in Oahu, I was actually swimming with my native Hawaiian friend Kamaka’ike Bruecher. And we went swimming, and it was my first time swimming there. And I just felt so relieved to be back in the water. And she goes, ‘Ho sis, even though you're Chamorro and I'm Hawaiian, we come from the same mother ocean.’
Naina Rao: Wow.
Arielle Taitano Lowe: Yeah.
Naina Rao: And that's when it hit you.
Arielle Taitano Lowe: Yeah. That's when it hit me and like, yeah, the ocean is my mother. That’s the birthplace. That's the return. It's medicine for our people. And I hope this book can be medicine for whoever needs it, right?
Naina Rao: I want to get a little bit more into the book without giving things away. You divide the book into three parts. The first is Origins, the second?
Arielle Taitano Lowe: Taking Flight.
Naina Rao: And the last one is Returning Home. Why did you divide into those three chapters?
Arielle Taitano Lowe: Those three sections really reflect my own migration in both a literal sense and a metaphorical sense. So Origins, in a literal sense, originating in Guam. Taking Flight, taking these opportunities away from home, visiting new places, and reflect back on how my origins and how my home island of Guam informs my perspectives and my experiences away from home. At some point, there's a return. And the culmination of this book was me finally, being able to come back home, after I had left to do my Ph.D.
Naina Rao: I was reading a poem from your Origins section, titled, Daughter of Divorce. You write, ‘I am a daughter of divorce, scientifically known to be a daughter of depression. But as hurt as I am, Mom, I understand that even adults need second chances.’ And that reminded me of what this longtime therapist that I had who told me, growth’s not pretty. And that's why it's called growing pains. And that's what I really took away from this particular poem. A lot of it is growing pains. How long did the pain of your parents divorce take for you to grow out of it?
Arielle Taitano Lowe: I think by the time that I noticed, my parents are both happier with their new partners. Kind of towards my master's program, and just my own coming of age. I feel like there's this second coming of age and people think that coming of age is only for adolescents. But I really felt that when I graduated college, I turned 21… If you go to college, you get a college degree start working, that was a whole next level coming of age. And, working full-time, understanding a bit more about the hardships of adult life, having to sacrifice a lot to work a job, make money and to provide. That was a moment in my life when I went crying to like both of my parents and just like, I am so grateful for everything you've ever done for me, because this is so difficult. I think that's when it happened for me. And writing this poem really helped me process a lot of that.
Naina Rao: Another poem from your Taking Flight section is called Orality Will Not Be Canonized. I'd love for you to recite the first few lines of that poem.
Arielle Taitano Lowe: Orality Will Not Be Canonized, after Michael Lujan Bevacqua’s “The Revolution Will Not Be Haolified.” I sat in a room of native academics and saw publications weighed more than genealogies of survival. And if publication means sharpening my tongue into a capitalists pen, then my orality will not be canonized. I read my poem to my Papa once. He shrugged and asked, ‘well, how much fish can you catch with it?’ His orality will not be canonized. My abuser’s name was published beside mine once, and that's when I knew my orality will not be canonized. I conversed in CHamoru with a congressman at the Library of Congress in D.C. once. My grandma shrugged at the story, unimpressed. Her orality will not be canonized.
Naina Rao: Arielle what does that mean? What does Orality will not be canonized mean?
Arielle Taitano Lowe: We have our own narratives beyond the page. And being CHamoru, being from Guam, you know people. And the page does not always capture who people really are. The page does not always capture the true talents and abilities of a community. Because I'll be honest with you, I may have published this book. But if you put me on a stage with all of my peers from high school and college, that competed with me and slam poetry, I'm not gonna be first place. And I'm not ashamed of that. Because I think there's a lot of power in orality that people beyond the Pacific are not willing or not ready to recognize. And that's just one layer of the issue. Publication is privilege. I may be the first of my peers to publish a full length poetry collection. But like my Papa says, how much fish can I catch with it? Like how many lives do I really touch? What is this poetry book compared to my peers who are on the front lines teaching at Okkodo High School, George Washington High School.This poem to me was just my way of pretty much telling all these… you know now that I publish, I sit in rooms with other people who publish. And I've heard and seen and witnessed, there's this perception that I disagree with, that poets who don't publish aren't worth examining, aren't worth investing time and mentorship into. And I don't think that mindset fits our community in the Pacific. And so this poem was just one way of saying just because you publish, and this holds me accountable too, none of that is ever going to be as important as what your community perceives and feels about you. Like, does your community respect you, do you give back to your community? And this poem is just one way, I hope to hold myself accountable., and hold other poets from the Pacific who publish, accountable too.
Naina Rao: Thank you so much, Arielle.
Arielle Taitano Lowe: Thanks, Naina.
This transcription has been edited for clarity.
