Noʻu Revilla is an ʻŌiwi poet and educator. Born and raised on the island of Maui, she prioritizes aloha, gratitude, and collaboration in her practice. She is the author of Ask the Brindled, a National Poetry Series selection and winner of the Balcones Prize. Her work has appeared in journals and magazines such as World Literature Today, Michigan Quarterly Review, Lit Hub, Split This Rock, and elsewhere. She is an associate professor of creative writing at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa.
Photo by Elyse Butler near Kūpikipikiʻō
Photo by Natalia Reich at Poesiefestival Berlin 2025
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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 was selected as a winner of 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 published in journals and magazines such as World Literature Today, ANMLY, Michigan Quarterly Review, Poetry Northwest, Colorado Review, Prairie Schooner, Split This Rock, and elsewhere.
She was a 2023 Poetry & the Senses Fellow with Berkeley Arts Research Center and an 8x8 Artist at Shangri La: Museum of Islamic Art, Culture & Design in 2024. Noʻu has performed throughout Hawaiʻi, New York, California, Toronto, Berlin, 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.
Poetry and politics run in the same river. We need to keep reaching for each other.
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. E ola i ka wai.
Photo by Elyse Butler near Kūpikipikiʻō
*Unless otherwise noted, all author photos on website were taken by Bryan Kamaoli Kuwada.