Noʻu Revilla (she / her / ʻo ia) is an ʻŌiwi poet and educator. Born and raised on the island of Maui, she prioritizes aloha, gratitude, and collaboration in her practice. She teaches creative writing at the University of Hawaiʻi-Mānoa and is a lifetime “slyly / reproductive” student of Haunani-Kay Trask.
Noʻu’s debut book ASK THE BRINDLED (Milkweed Editions 2022) won the 2021 National Poetry Series and 2023 Balcones Prize. She also won the 2021 Omnidawn Broadside Poetry prize with her poem “iwi hilo means thigh bone means core of one’s being,” which was composed in the Līlīlehua rain of Pālolo valley. Her writing has been anthologized and featured in Lit Hub, ANMLY, Poetry Northwest, World Literature Today, Colorado Review, Prairie Schooner, Split This Rock, and elsewhere.
She was a 2023 Poetry & the Senses Fellow with Berkeley Arts Research Center and has performed throughout Hawaiʻi, New York, California, Toronto, and Papua New Guinea. Her work has also been adapted for dance and theatrical productions in Hawaiʻi and Aotearoa as well as art exhibitions for the Honolulu Museum of Art and the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts.
After standing with her lāhui on Maunakea and teaching poetry at Puʻuhuluhulu University, she co-edited with Bryan Kamaoli Kuwada “We are Maunkea: Aloha ʻĀina Narratives of Protest, Protection, and Place,” which served as a special issue of Biography: An Interdisciplinary Journal in 2020. She served as guest editor for Poem-a-Day in May 2024 and co-editor of We the Gathered Heat: Asian American and Pacific Islander Poetry, Performance, and Spoken Word (Haymarket Books 2024) and the labor of love, still-in-progress-but-coming-to-you-soon Queernesia: Anthology of Indigenous Queer Oceania. With Brandy Nālani McDougall and Dana Naone Hall, she also co-wrote “Aia hea ka wai o Lahaina,” which is dedicated to the lands, waters, and kamaʻāina of Lahaina who continue to rebuild after the 2023 wildfires.
Poetry and politics run in the same river. We need to keep reaching for each other. I wai noʻu.
Author photo taken by Elyse Butler. Unless otherwise attributed, all other photos taken by Bryan Kamaoli Kuwada.