Jozuf Hadley, AKA “Brada Jo,” is a pidgin language poet born and raised on Kaua’i. The bearded poet is now in his 70s and is traveling to Kaua’i from his home in the lush back country of Manoa Valley in
Jozuf Hadley, AKA “Brada Jo,” is a pidgin language poet born and raised on Kaua’i.
The bearded poet is now in his 70s and is traveling to Kaua’i from his home in the lush back country of Manoa Valley in Honolulu.
Hadley returns to the island this weekend for a series of appearances. They include a reading at the Kaua’i Museum from 7-8:30 p.m. on Friday, a talk at Border’s Books & Music at noon on Saturday and a reading at the Church of the Pacific at the church’s Easter Sunday service.
“I’m tickled to present my stuff, my newer stuff is deeper, soulful,” Hadley said when asked to offer a preview of his readings.
The poet is to share some of his classic Hawaiian stories in the form of poetic pidgin language and calligraphic art form that appear in his pidgin language books at the local appearances.
“I embrace the pidgin like a deep soul part of myself, and I recognize that pidgin is everybody, it doesn’t divide, whereas we generate so much division,” Hadley said in a phone interview with The Garden Island when asked about his work in turning pidgin into literature. “Pidgin is everybody. Everyman’s language. It’s inclusive.”
Hadley’s latest pidgin book is “Avebade Bade” (Everybody Body) from Mutual Publishing. Tucked in the back cover of the square, handsize book is an audio CD with tracks of Hadley reading his poetry in pidgin.
The book last year won a Pele Award for Design from the American Advertising Federation for the work of its designer, Jane Hopkins of Mutual Publishing.
At his readings Hadley said he will present pieces taken from his series of pidgin books and CDs. Many of the pieces refer to his memories of life on Kaua’i in the 1930s and 1940s, and refer to how growing up on Kaua’i has influenced the rest of his life.
The Kaua’i trip is a reunion, too, for Hadley, who spent his youth living in Lihu’e. He was born in 1932 on Kaua’i and is the son of Thelma Hadley, the longtime head librarian for Kaua’i’s public library and the daughter of Kenneth Hopper, the publisher of The Garden Island in the 1910s and 1920s.
One theme Hadley explores in his poetic work is what he calls “supah hero monstah,” or the influence of the scary monster movies he watched at the old Lihue Theater on Kuhio Highway, and the golden era comic books he read as a child.
“We went to the Lihue theater after school, and on Sunday; that’s the thing you did during the war,” Hadley recalled, with a stop at the neighboring Ota Sweet Shop.
Hadley plans to meet up with his boyhood chum Alan Fay of Princeville. Over 60 years ago Hadley and Fay played Tarzan in the “jungle” that bordered Hadley’s plantation-style home off Nawiliwili Road. The pidgin poet said the overgrown acres of open land that then bordered Nawiliwili Road, on the Lihu’e side, made up his own private escape world as a child.
Also a noted sculptor, artist and art teacher, Hadley began his pidgen publishing career in 1972 with the release of a recording of three Hawaiian Stories in pidgin called: “Chalookyu Eensai” (Try look you inside). The recording was published as a set piece with a reproduction of a composition notebook that visually expressed his pidgin thoughts in calligraphic art form.
The recording and book caught the eye of Fay, who hadn’t seen “Brada Jo” since age 12. Over the next 30 years Fay searched Hawai’i and the mainland to find his childhood friend.
In November, Fay’s search ended thanks to an article in the Honolulu Advertiser that said Hadley had returned to live again in Hawai’i. The article was a review of “Avebade Bade.”
