UH Manoa Professor is U.S. Delegate to International Poetry Conference in the Philippines

University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa‘s Frank Stewart, a professor of English and a nationally acclaimed poet, recently represented the United States at the Asia-Pacific Conference- Workshop on Indigenous and Contemporary Poetry in Manila, Philippines. The conference featured international poets and writer-delegates from 13 nations in the Asia-Pacific region who explored the linkages between indigenous poetry—especially that of oral tradition—and poetry as it is now practiced in Asia-Pacific countries and the United States.

Stewart is a widely published poet and essayist, and an expert on the contemporary writing of the Pacific and Asia. He is the recipient of the 1998 College of Languages, Linguistics, and Literature Excellence in Teaching award. In addition to teaching, he is also the editor of "Mānoa," an international journal that publishes contemporary literature from Asia and the Pacific. The journal, which Stewart co-founded in 1989, is published twice a year by the University of Hawai'i Press.

Stewart has bachelor‘s and master‘s degrees from UH Mānoa, and teaches courses in creative writing, modern and contemporary poetry and poetics, and American nature writing.

Other poets at the conference included Kripal Singh of Singapore, Kazuko Shiraishi of Japan, Ko Un of South Korea, and Anthony Tran of the Philippines. The conference was sponsored by the Japan Foundation, consulates from the region, and the host country. The 13 nations represented were Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, China, Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the Philippines, and the United States.