Darlene Javar
A retired educator and principal, I am enjoying my ohana and the country life of Ka’u on the Big Island, Hawaii. If I had to describe my poetry in one word — ‘unsedated’, because words can be used to ‘elevate’ emotion, surprise, pain, and tears. It’s not a natural inclination for me to write the tranquil poem. In December 1996, I began a phase of manic writing as I sat on my mother’s hospital bed after we ‘pulled the plug’. “The Passing of Time” published by Bamboo Ridge Press, marked the beginning of a phase of writing/survival now captured in my upcoming debut chapbook, “Patsy’s Gingerbread Fantasy”, celebrating a local woman’s (mom’s) passions, pain, and perseverance, forthcoming through Finishing Line Press.
My poems are published by Bamboo Ridge Press, Chaminade Literary Review, Hawaii Pacific Review, Into the Teeth of the Wind, The Distillery, Earth’s Daughters, Storyboard 8, Kaimana, and Tinfish. My poetry is also recorded in “Rural Voices Radio II,” National Writing Project, and “Aloha Shorts”, a co-production of Hawaii Public Radio and Bamboo Ridge Press. “Shame and the First Day of College” is cited in The Bloomsbury Handbook of Contemporary American Poetry (Svonkin and Axelrod, 2023).
Darlene’s Published Book
Patsy’s Gingerbread Fantasy
Set in multicultural Hawaii, includes poems of ohana, resolve, and perseverance, aloha transcending time and place as a family endures and grieves for losses across decades. Layers of meaning unfold through carefully depicted images and scenes centered around a mother whose grit and passions are timeless. The reader is emersed in culture, country, and coffee as he/she travels to rural Pahala Town in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, Punaluʻu Beach during a tidal wave, Queen’s Medical Center on Oahu, and a kitchen filled with gingerbread house candies, nutmeg, turmeric, anise and lucky bottom fish to steam on the barbeque grill.
Poetry Links:
“The Growing of Hope”, published by Bamboo Ridge, Journal of Hawaii Literature and Arts Issue #91, is available online via the University of Hawaii through free downloadable ebooks at https://dspace.lib.hawaii.edu/server/api/core/bitstreams/ab4ce9d8-fd4a-48a3-a9a6-64db3280f392/content
My work has also been read and recorded on Aloha Shorts, Hawaii Public Radio. “For Robin, Unclaimed”, The Best of Aloha Shorts published by Bamboo Ridge https://www.bambooridge.org/aloha-shorts/, originally published by Bamboo Ridge, Journal of Hawaii Literature and Arts Issue #100
“Shame and the First Day of College, https://soundcloud.com/nwpradio/track-05-2?in=nwpradio/sets/rural-voices-radio-volume-ii-cd-1 Rural Voices Radio: Hawai'i - Shame and the First Day of College, originally published in “Growing Up Local” by Bamboo Ridge Press.
