As the threat of climate change looms, one poet has deployed her craft to advocate for and protect her island community.
Kathy Jetn̄il-Kijiner is a poet and Climate Envoy for the Marshall Islands. She was named the Spring 2026 Dan and Maggie Inouye Distinguished Chair in Democratic Ideals.
She joined HPR to share a reading of her poetry and discuss her work and activism. Jetn̄il-Kijiner is scheduled to deliver a public lecture at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa on Wednesday, April 1.
Interview Highlights
On the importance of climate activism
JETN̄IL-KIJINER: It’s just the fact that there is so much denial going on that we need to be louder than ever, which is easier said than done at the end of the day. It's a tough environment we're in right now, and with so much geopolitical tension and wars happening right now, it can be hard to care about something like climate change. It can get subsumed in all of that travesty. But it's all connected at the end of the day. So I do think it's really important to keep working on these issues, you know, and that's something very close to my heart and to my community.
On her current work
JETN̄IL-KIJINER: I just completed my doctorate, and it was called “Our Kapijukinen: Climate Adaptation Policy and Poetry in the Marshall Islands.” So it’s basically an analysis of our climate adaptation policies. And there's a lot that we're doing right now on climate change, and that's basically my entire role as climate envoy for our Marshallese government is, you know, representing my country at climate change meetings, working on negotiations, and also supporting our team in developing policy. All of that just sounds very straightforward, but there's a lot I'm processing throughout all of this, and I definitely miss creative work and am looking forward to hopefully being able to direct a little bit more attention to
processing what I've been working on and creating something out of that.
On her Marshallese identity
JETN̄IL-KIJINER: Identity is so shifting. It's very fluid. … I think being at home for so many years has taught me how complex it actually all is, and I also had to relearn my language. So I guess I would say for all of those young people out there who might be struggling with identity and culture, like, it doesn't have to look like one specific way. I don't think a lot of Marshallese people expected a poet to come out of our community, but there are poets, actually, they just look a little bit different. And I would also say it's possible to reconnect and to make that, to do that work, to relearn and to reconnect deeper and deeper.
Kathy Jetn̄il-Kijiner’s public lecture, “Our Kapijukinen: Climate Adaptation Policy and Poetry in the Marshall Islands,” will be held at the Orvis Auditorium on UH Mānoa Campus on April 1, 2026. More information can be found here.
This story aired on The Conversation on March 31, 2026. The Conversation airs weekdays at 11 a.m. Jinwook Lee adapted this story for the web.
