BIPOC Poets to Read in 2022 Series: Native American Writers
This series, beginning with Native American Poets, is dedicated to BIPOC poets and celebrates all storytellers from various walks of life.
Joy Harjo’s An American Sunrise
Rivers are the old roads, as are songs, to traverse memory.
I emerged from the story, dripping with the waters of memory.
Joy Harjo (Muscogee (Creek) Nation), the 23rd Poet Laureate of the United States, shares unsettling and honest emotion with An American Sunrise, a collection that opens with the Indian Removal Act of 1830, an unlawful act that forcibly removed indigenous peoples from their homelands by government forces. There was not just one Trail of Tears, as this was happening across the nation. Weaving short prose of historical moments between poetry, Harjo offers a space that allows longing and memories to linger, as if a trail itself. It is beautifully graceful in its rage and love.
Layli Long’s Soldier’s Whereas
If I’m transformed by language, I am often
crouched in footnote or blazing in title. Where in the body do I begin;
Layli Long Soldier (Oglala Lakota Nation) shows rhetoric what real language is in Whereas. Exploring the language used by the U.S. government in its responses, treaties, and apologies to Native American peoples and tribes, she deconstructs and turns that language on its side. Notably illustrated with the use of white space, mixing short, minimal lines with longer prose pieces, her command of language and form is playfully sharp. When I finished reading it the first time, I immediately returned to page one and started over. Read it. Read it out loud. See the grass sway. Feel it and listen. Then read it again, and keep listening.
Ray Young Bear’s Manifestation Wolverine
Listen to the words coming from our elders when they mention our blood drying inside us and how it peels…
Manifestation Wolverine is Ray Young Bear’s (Meskwaki) most recent collection of poetry (2015), and includes his three prior collections: Winter of the Salamander (1979), The Invisible Musician (1990), and The Rock Island Hiking Club (2001)). This is a moving collection of work that spans nearly four decades of the poet’s life and career. Sitting in this space with him feels like time stops. It’s easy to get pulled into any of his four collections.
Lastly, two poets whose work I haven’t yet read but was recommended:
