About the Piece

Merging dream and time-travel motifs, “A Five-Century Round Trip Through Kukuipahu” reflects on the significance of this heiau. It is inspired by the reports of Lehua and Kanani Kaulukukui, Patrick Kirch, Tracy Tam Sing, Tahiti Ahsam, and others.

Kukuipahu, one of the four ancestral places within the Kohala Historical Sites State Monument, has been under the stewardship of the Waikaloa-based Kuamo’o Foundation, Inc. since 2010.

About the Artist

Based in metropolitan Los Angeles, Kelli Bond is a consultant and advocate in multiple areas who is also a writer, editor, educator, group facilitator, and speaker. At various times since she was in her tweens, she has published and publicly given readings of her poetry, short stories, and essays.

In the mid-1980s, Kelli served as an associate editor of The Webs We Weave, Orange County, California’s first major poetry anthology with 59 authors that received extensive coverage in the Los Angeles Times.

The Times’ coverage resulted largely from the book carrying Kelli’s exposé-in-verse of the U.S. Department of Energy’s above-ground nuclear testing program in Nevada. Her father (half Native Hawaiian from the Keli’ipio-Kuamo’o ‘ohana of Coconut Island, Hilo; and half Irish/Scottish/English) and 46 other men had been secretly flown from Camp Pendleton, California to the test site in late October 1958. Neither they nor their families were informed in advance.

Read more about Kelli at https://www.linkedin.com/in/olacomm/.

Genre
Poetry

Technique/Media Used
Free verse

Date Created
07/19/2021