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. Her debut book ASK THE BRINDLED (Milkweed Editions 2022) won 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 featured in Poetry, Lit Hub, ANMLY, Beloit, Poetry Northwest, World Literature Today, Prairie Schooner, and the Library of Congress. She was a 2023 Poetry & the Senses Fellow with Berkeley Arts Research Center and has performed throughout Hawaiʻi, New York, California, Toronto, 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. With Bryan Kamaoli Kuwada, she co-edited “We are Maunkea: Aloha ʻĀina Narratives of Protest, Protection, and Place,” which served as a special issue of Biography: An Interdisciplinary Journal in 2020. Because poetry and politics run in the same river. I wai noʻu. She teaches creative writing at the University of Hawaiʻi-Mānoa and is a lifetime “slyly / reproductive” student of Haunani-Kay Trask.
Noʻu was an ARC Fellow in Spring 2023 with the Poetry & the Senses initiative, in collaboration with University of Hawaiʻi – she was chosen in the Graduate Fellow category.