Tiare Picard Book Launch and Reading at UH West Oʻahu

Tiare Picard Book Launch and Reading at UH West Oʻahu

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Tiare Picard Brings Aunty Uncle Dog Chicken Bee to West Oʻahu

When the University of Hawaiʻi West Oʻahu campus finalizes its Fall semester calendar, events usually balance academic lectures with routine student milestones. But on Tuesday, November 10, the James & Abigail Campbell Library is hosting a very different kind of gathering. For its third and final event of the semester, the campus is celebrating a book launch for Tiare Picard’s debut poetry collection, Aunty Uncle Dog Chicken Bee.

The event runs from 1:00 pm to 2:00 pm on the second floor exhibition space of the campus library, featuring a reading and a Q&A session with the author. According to event details provided by the university, organizers are also offering dry snacks and prizes for attendees. Andrew Godefroy is coordinating the event for the Humanities, West Oʻahu Campus.

Inside the World of an ʻAiea Community

Picard was born in Honolulu and earned her PhD from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. She currently teaches composition and creative writing at the University of Hawaiʻi — West Oʻahu and serves as a cofounder and editor for Hoʻolana Publishing, a literary hui dedicated to the arts and literature in Hawai‘i. Readers can find her earlier verses showcased in publications and literary volumes like the End of the World Project, Shadowed Unheard Voices, Whetu Moana II, Tinfish 18.5: Poetry, Puzzles and Games, Achiote Seeds, and the Hawaiʻi Review.

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Her new book maps a distinct emotional and physical landscape. Aunty Uncle Dog Chicken Bee explores community and movement through prose poetry, lyrics, sound poetry, and character sketches. Throughout her collection, Picard depicts the everyday existence of local aunties and uncles, neighborhood dogs and chickens, and resident bees striving to carve out living spaces within a society that pushes them to the margins. Economic disparities weigh heavily on residents, stray animals navigate gaps in dilapidated wire fences, and a constant fragility permeates these quiet daily routines.

"Each poem portrays the movement of people, the movement of poetic forms, and the movement of language itself as the text shifts fluidly from English to Pidgin English and back again."

That linguistic fluidity is central to the collection’s design. By moving between English and Pidgin English, Picard gives voice to the people and the beings who all too often exist in the outskirts of Hawaiʻi’s stories, capturing complex layers of island culture while challenging inequitable structures of power.

A Busy Tuesday Across University Campuses

The poetry reading is part of a crowded Tuesday schedule across the University of Hawaiʻi system on November 10. Earlier that morning at 8:00 am, the Mānoa campus hosted an online fast-track lab titled Syllabus to Skill for embedding micro-credentials, alongside a Geography & Environment final oral exam held over Zoom. Later in the afternoon, the Mānoa campus is scheduling a CJS Career and Professional Development Talk in Moore Hall, a pop-in networking session at the Walter Dods, Jr. RISE Center, an informational Zoom session for the UH Law School JD program, and a film screening hosted by the Center for Okinawan Studies at the Hawaii Institute of Geophysics.

For those attending the West Oʻahu event, more information is available through Andrew Godefroy at 8084291975 or via email at [email protected].

Tiare Picard Book Launch and Reading at UH West Oʻahu

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