Hawaii Review 73: Get Some Place Time

by Chris Mikesell

chris mikesell / KA LAMAKUA

Donovan Colleps, Editor-in-Chief of Hawaii Review, chose "place" to be the theme for HR's newest issue. 

Sometimes, you have to go looking for a theme to unify your work - but for Donovan Colleps and his crew at Hawaii Review, their theme came to them.

"The concept was place," he says. "It became a familiar theme with the accepted works, so we kind of went from there and structured it around varying themes of place - what it means to writers and what it means to people. It's actually a pretty malleable theme - from poem to poem or story to story... different aspects of place appeared."

The newest issue of Colleps' literary journal, now in its 73rd semi-annual iteration, features not just poems and fiction but also a bit of do-it-yourself papercraft in the form of a model ahapua'a.

It's a very hands on book - reading it requires you to reorient the book as you move from piece to piece. Is the spine on the top or on the side? Depends on how you look at things. Depends on what you're reading. The way the book is built forces readers to think even more about place - and that's exactly how Colleps likes it.

"There have been past editors who have changed the format and the size, but nothing to the extent of where you literally are flipping the book over," Colleps says. "Surprisingly, that still ties into 'place' - how it affects you and how you choose to let it affect you.

"It also parallels with the act of writing. When people sit down to write they want to tell a story and manipulate their chosen environment."

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Hawaii Review 73 is available now - free to all UH Manoa Students with validated ID and $10 for non-students at the Board of Publications offices in Hemenway Hall.