Microchild

by Valentine Namio Sengebau

An Anthology of Poetry offers a collection of poems about cultural identity, politics and love that were written by renowned Palauan poet, Valentine N. Sengebau, who spent the last 20 years of his life in the Marianas. His book was published by the Northern Marianas Humanities Council and is the inspiration for their annual Valentine N. Sengebau Poetry Competition for CNMI’s young writers. The foreword was written by Bonifacio Basilius and illustrations were of traditional Palauan images.

Genres: Poetry

68 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2004

Reviews

[Grace]

Around the World Reading Challenge: PALAU
===
Slim poetry collection by Palauan poet exploring themes of the loss of cultural identify in the face of Western expansion, the intricacies of politics between the various Micronesian nations with one another and the United States, and the poet's own life. I found the concept of this collection interesting, but the poetry itself didn't quite resonate and felt more amateurish than I'd been hoping.

[Cherie]

This is a great collection of poetry by Palauan poet Valentine N. Sengebau. His work deals with Micronesian politics, cultural identity, and personal self-reflections about life. He published most of his poems while living on his adopted home island of Saipan in the Northern Mariana Islands.

[giada]

reading around the world one book at a time 2025 : palau

The biggest difficulty in this challenge is that of finding enough books for the island nations, both in Oceania and the Caribbeans; this time I lucked out, because not only the Northern Mariana Islands Council for the Humanities provides free pdfs of the books they publish, a project created to showcase Micronesian authors. Thankfully this poetry anthology also came with some historical context in an introduction penned by the author’s best friend.

Sengebau, who chose as a new home Saipan, in the Northern Mariana Islands, after leaving his home island of Peleliu in Palau, was a prolific writer, yet the ones in this anthology are all the surviving poems by the author, all published in the span of five years.

A curious and intelligent mind, Sengebau gave an incredible importance to his ancestry and his connection to his own culture, while at the same time feeling a disconnect from the traditional ways born out of his hunger for literature and languages. One of the reasons he chose Saipan as his adopted home was that the island is a cosmopolitan centre in that area of the Pacific, his “window to a larger world”.

His poems are mainly about love for his culture and his family, as well as his politics and the need for resistance to western imperialism. They are poems in free verse and very casual to “reflect my native soul and heritage”— their lack of hermetism makes them approachable to the typical layman, which I assume was the reason he didn’t flex his Berkeley degree at the readers of the Micronesian Reporter and Marianas Variety.

[Midas Janssen]

Reading the world #11: Palau 🇵🇼

[Lulu]

I’m glad I could read these poems by an author I have never heard about before. Great was the introduction and epilogue about the author.

[Filippa Nystedt]

Read around the world - Palau