Hundreds of years ago, Polynesians sailed 2,270 miles from Tahiti to Hawai'i. It's an ancient umbilical cord traced in the Pacific Ocean. This week marks the launch of a reconnection — "Varua Tupu: New Writing from French Polynesia," published by the University of Hawai'i Press.

"Tahiti is the source of our Hawaiian culture," says Frank Stewart, one of three editors of the new book, "but the facts of history have separated the islands."

The project started in 2001 with a conversation. Anthropology graduate student Alexander Mawyer was studying Tahitian in preparation for field work he would be doing in Mangareva, part of French Polynesia's Gambier Islands. Also interested in film and literature, he worked on the Manoa journal, of which Stewart is editor. The two discussed the possibility of an anthology of Tahitian writing.

"Because Alex was fluent in Tahitian and French, he was the perfect person to see what was being done," says Stewart.

Once in French Polynesia, Mawyer connected with Kareva Mateata-Allain, the Tuamotuan-British writer and translator, and they began to explore what was being published by indigenous people in the islands. In 2002, the answer was "very little. But there were wonderful writers who had been writing for a long time," says Stewart.

But since then, the literary scene has "blossomed," says Stewart, a result of the independence movement and the election last year of President Oscar Temaru. One group of writers began a literary magazine, Littérama'ohi, and a salon.

"Writers in Tahiti wanted to do something that was uniquely Tahitian, just like the Hawaiian writers here, who tend to capture the mind and heart of the islands. There's a strong sense of wanting to understand their Tahitian roots. That was difficult to do in formal French, so they experimented in many ways. Experimentation was not always accepted."

He draws a parallel to Hawai'i, where "we had such a small publishing community for so long because nobody on the Mainland thought anything serious could be happening here. It was hard for local writers to break through to the Mainland market."

When Stewart and his colleagues approached people about putting together a collection of Tahitian literature, "They said, 'Well it's going to be small.' It was shocking to us. Again, we saw many parallels with Hawai'i."

Yet, Stewart found a strong sense of literature there. "We don't really have that in Hawai'i — Americans don't have that same sense of literature, the importance of writing. Even though Tahiti is small, the writing is very sophisticated, very high quality."

After lots of translation by Mateata-Allain and UH's Jean Toyama, the result is an attractive collection, designed by Barbara Pope, filled with stories, poems, essays, photo essays and striking art incorporating Hawaiian and Tahitian mythology by Bobby Holcomb, the late Hawaiian-African American musician (he counted people like Kui Lee as friends) and painter who found a home in Huahine.

In August, the Hawai'i contingent of people who worked on the book went to Tahiti. "We felt it was important to launch the book there," says Stewart. The event was held at the home of James Norman Hall, author of "Mutiny on the Bounty," where guests included the Minister of Culture Tauhiti Nena and E Tahiti O, the country's best-known halau, performed.

"We decided to publish mostly older writers who had produced remarkable things — novels, experimental fiction, poetry. These are really the kupuna," says Stewart. "Of course, there are other writers we wanted to publish, but couldn't ... we see this as just a beginning."