So thank you so much everyone for just being here tonight
in conversation.
It was an amazing reading, and I'm really
excited to ask you a few questions.
So tonight's program is being supported
by the Hurand Connection Fund.
And it's a new fund that was started
in Tucson this past year.
And the fund is designed to bring people together
across differences, and to use art and creativity as a means
to connect.
It's rooted in the Jewish values of justice, humanism, and love.
Can you talk a little bit about how
poetry can be a site for justice and/or
how this anthology might work to connect people?
I mean, where do you start with--
I don't even know where to start with justice because even
the act of writing as Indigenous peoples, that's
an act for justice.
And even in my poem, "Running," that
was my primary impulse for writing poetry when I first
began writing, was not like everybody else
I know who wanted to be a writer from the time
they were 5-years-old.
For me, it was being part of Native rights movements.
And then you can see that also in Elise Paschen's poem.
That poem came about absolutely for the site.
Yeah, the place where a tribal member
was killed to steal their land.
That poem was to bring back-- was
to actually replicate the site.
The poem replicates the site and says here,
this is what happened.
This is what happened.
This was a woman.
She has a family, this is what she was wearing.
These are the lands.
These lands where she probably came down here
many times in these lands, fed her spirit
and they're a part of us.
And this is the site.
The poem actually in a way re-enacts the murder site
even as it re-enacts the beauty of that place.
It's all in the same place in the poem.
Thank you.
Thank you, Joy.
I was just thinking about this quote from James Baldwin that
was recently mentioned somewhere as it should be all the time,
not everything that is faced can be changed,
but nothing can be changed unless it is faced.
And I think about poetry as a way--
it's a language that enables us to really face things
in a multidimensional way.
That some languages, some other aspects of language
even just how we're talking right now
doesn't always quite get at or needs a different kind
of length of time to get at.
But there's something about the compression
of poetry and the way that it challenges
us to see different dimensions of things,
to see interconnectivity of things.
Not just through using metaphorical language
but through associations and bringing memories
in and triggering sounds and smells and all the senses,
we feel something.
And so this is a way of facing, like truly facing.
Not just addressing it but seeing it
with our face both forward-looking and
backward-looking.
And so in that way, I think poetry
is an apt language for justice and for social change
because it allows that kind of change to happen.
It's like seeing with your spirit.
Mm-hmm.
Right.
When you asked that question, I also immediately thought, well,
what led me to think about words for social justice,
and [INAUDIBLE].
And I don't know if any of you remembered the story of Emile
Zola and J'Accuse!
I was probably 11.
It was an old movie at the time but the poetry of "I Accuse."
He was writing this chant to the newspapers
about Alfred Dreyfus.
And that has stuck with me all my life.
I've looked it up, I've thought a lot about that language,
and the power of that I accuse, the repetition of that.
And it linked, as a kid, it linked me
to my grandmother's stories of what happened to the land, what
happened to our people.
And those kinds of things, I think those events--
those events of seeking justice, those events
for Native people of being removed from our land--
they really influenced people, especially in the Southeast
but everywhere, everywhere to use language,
this heightened language to seek justice,
compassion for the things that have happened.
And the Osage murders, it makes perfect sense
that this new collection is a way
to get at things that are not spoken, the injustices.
And I can't imagine not using the sacred language of poetry
to talk about justice.
I know Phillip Carroll Morgan in his poem in this anthology
is using Choctaws and a chant to get at certain issues.
So only poetry can do this.
And I'm a fiction writer, but poetry
can infuse other people in ways that I
don't think another genre can.
Jennifer, you used a phrase that I am very curious,
and there are certain positioning
that's very visual where you talk about looking
forward and looking backward.
And I think you might have used the word "in seeing."
And can you just say a little bit more about that
because I'm very curious about this not only in your work
but also in the work of those that
are presented in the anthology.
Yeah, thank you for asking.
Well, I write a lot and think a lot about images.
And image is really important to my work as a poet,
and also I'm just compelled by imagery and poetry.
But particularly the kind of imagery
that really can't be depicted or painted or photographed.
It's the kind of image that you can't describe
like the image of a dream.
You can't really tell the story of that dream,
you can't really say what that image is.
But the poem somehow is able to create it.
And so I think about it as the invisible image.
And an image that is both visible
but it's inside visibility.
And it makes me think of insight.
When we have insight, we have intuition, all these things
that are about the interior knowledge which
is not on the surface level.
So I like thinking about in seeing
as like making active insight.
So it's not something you have.
I don't own insight but I'm in the process of in seeing.
I can choose to be in the process of in seeing
as a way of being in the world.
And I think that's how I am in writing poems.
I'm trying to see inside.
And also it's being able to see through the layers and layers
of narratives that have-- especially
oppressive narratives that have dominated
lands and peoples, that have created injustices, so.
And I think within this anthology--
I mean, this is an anthology of such a vast array of poets
that are all different.
The common thread is that poets are members
of Native nations and several other threads,
but ultimately, we're all different people,
different cultures, different identities,
different ways of being poets, different means of language.
But I do see as a kind of commonness
through many of the poems an engagement with in seeing.
And maybe that's because I see that in any poem,
the nature of poem is in seeing, I think.
But particularly because so much of the work of poets
from this land where so much of our memories, cultures,
languages is so attempted to be erased,
we have to work that much harder to see, and to remind
other people to see.
Not just their stereotype of what they think they
should see.
I like that the homonym for insight is I-N-C-I-T-E.
Oh yeah.
Which goes a long way, like incite,
it becomes the activation.
Oh yeah.
Yeah.
--so that you're insighting with your--
That is exciting.
--with inciting.
Actually, I hadn't think about that.
I hadn't made that connection, that's very cool.
Yeah, it struck me there for some reason that way,
and I thought, boy, you could really play--
go with that.
Mm-hmm.
And inciting can be a very positive thing.
Kind of to incite the blooming, to incite the knowledge,
and the recollection.
To incite the insight.
Mm-hmm, yeah.
Packing that, I just was really fascinated by that,
and I wanted to know more.
It's really obvious we've talked about the anthology
beginning with the land and this idea of place,
and I just wanted to know--
I can't even imagine putting together an anthology
this big of such importance, and I
wanted to know what type of considerations
did you have to--
how did you even begin to think about it,
and how did it move forward in a way
that you felt did all of these different places justice,
if you will?
Well, it started--
I'll start this off because I have
been in conversation for a few years, I mean, not constant.
But I had been thinking that we had no Norton
anthology of Native literature, and then I would think,
but where would we even start?
But I still ran it by them.
I ran it by them.
And my editor, Jill had written to the college,
talked to the college rep there and she said, well,
we've thought about that but there's
no way we could pay all the permissions.
Which doesn't totally make sense to me,
but they didn't think they would reap a profit
after paying the permissions.
But she said we would love to have a Norton
anthology of Native poetry.
So I had to think about it, but I
was teaching that time at University
of Tennessee, Knoxville.
They'd given me an assistant, they'd given me--
I had wonderful students and I looked around
and I thought, hmm.
And so I went to my department chair
and asked if I could teach two of my graduate classes
as how to put together native literature.
They were on native literature and how to put together
a Norton anthology.
And they would work with me through the process.
And so the first class was giving them--
I had sent a proposal into Norton
and that's how it started.
And I was talking with the class, OK,
it starts with the land.
So then we laid it out in terms of different [? land ?]..
And then I got the contract, and then I asked LeAnne to come on.
I got together and I decided that each of the regions
needed--
we needed--
I guess the decision was to--
all the Norton anthologies I'd seen,
they have the experts, panels of experts, all the editors.
Usually there's quite a number of experts.
I thought, well-- and I thought about it.
I thought, well, why not?
We have a lot of incredible Native poets.
Our experts are going to be all Native poets.
We have a lot of other non-Natives
who have been excellent with Native literature,
and I thought about that.
I thought, no, this would be all Native poets.
And that was important.
So with those first classes, we would
pull together and have Skype meetings,
this was "BZ," before Zoom.
We'd have Skype meetings and with the different entities
from say, mountains and plains editors.
So that was great for the students too.
But it kind of started that way where we were in discussions
about our different areas, discussions
that covered all the aesthetics, what it would look like.
We had to put in a little fight to get more than 300 pages.
That was the first contract offered was for 300 pages,
and it's like, wait a minute we have 570 something
federally recognized tribes, they're state recognized.
Some of them are legit, many of them are not.
And we're given 300 pages and this
is supposed to be like from time immemorial
to the present of North America and the island specific,
how do we do this?
I mean, it was a big undertaking.
So it took working with the different-- just working
with each geographical area team.
And then all of us weighing in until we found--
we worked together through--
we worked together.
And Jennifer started out as one of the contributing editors,
we call them.
And she was absolutely--
it became very obvious that she was part of the--
The team.
Yeah, the hardcore center of the team, yeah, our team.
So.
She was essential too, I think.
Yeah.
Nicely made the triangle.
Yeah.
I think.
And yes, we're all Muscogee, and we're all women.
That has been noted negatively.
Negatively because we did work to try
to get a balance within the--
every team of editors worked to try
to get a balance within their group.
Somebody asked me yesterday or today
about the balance between male and female writers.
I think it's pretty balanced but I don't remember any numbers.
But we did work to get a balance.
It was part of the discussion.
Yeah, it was part of it.
So we could have made one three times as thick,
three or four times as thick.
So that was the difficulty is that we had to--
there are people and poems left out
we would have loved to have included.
So I don't know that any anthology is ever
definitive, especially one where we've got--
this is just a--
it gives you a sampling so to speak.
It gives you a sense.
I think it's successful in that you
do get a sense of the comprehensiveness
of our presence.
Of our presence in the field of American poetry
and even within our own communities.
We were so fortunate to have all these powerful, powerful voices
within the regions.
And, excuse me, I'm sorry.
I just think that the groups from those regions
also were fairly comprehensive, and it made the work
really a joy.
I think we have to remember that sometimes these organizations
or groups have had to work through some conflicts.
That is not what happened with this work.
We, from my memory, we worked together, had meetings.
And the people brought a good heart, a good way
into those discussions.
And I think it's amazing to look back
on a lot of those meetings, the gatherings, the work it was--
people brought their good heart into the project.
And I think it shows in the text.
I agree.
I mean, I think that one of the things
that I thought a lot about, it was just about community.
It just created a community on the page, which I loved.
My next question has to do with the Institute
that we're creating over at the Poetry Center.
And our theme for the Fall Institute
is how imaginative language and poems can help
create a sense of belonging.
And I know we've talked a little bit about justice, community
and connectedness, but can you share a little bit more
about what that means to you just as
writers of what that means.
Man, where do we start in the history of all of it?
The sense of belonging.
It so strange, a sense of belonging in a country
that if you look at Indigenous literature and Indigenous
peoples who were at the root of the imagination of the land.
And here we are, and then we were disappeared--
I say disappeared, using a term that probably came out
of South America.
But we were essentially disappeared from history
and from anything American, American literature,
American poetry.
American, American.
Because to be present, we're present as ghosts in a way.
And yet, we're absolutely essential.
So it creates a very strange relationship I think,
a perverted.
Yeah.
It becomes a very perverted relationship with
to be there and not there.
And then the images of being there
were savage, heathen, without culture, which
is the opposite of the truth.
Language has the possibility to create such exclusion.
In one way, in so many ways, one way, for example,
grammatically.
Just English grammar, for example,
the way that it's set up creates exclusion.
It demands pronouns, it excludes gender fluidity.
I mean, there are so many levels where language is used
in a manner that is excluding.
And it's very difficult to innovate language in--
I was a grant writer for 10 years,
it's really hard to innovate the language of a grant
because you need to make sense.
But you can really innovate language and flex language
to be inclusive in poetry.
It refuses the authority of ordinary meanings of things,
and it refuses the dominant language
that says this is right and this is wrong.
This person does not belong, this person
is not a part of America-- a, la, da.
It refuses all of those gestures,
those attempts to define and exclude.
Oh it can.
And if it's a good poem.
It does I believe.
It creates a different kind of legibility.
And I like to think of--
I mean, I remember once a friend told me
a story his daughter had told her some story
about seeing a bird in the sky.
And the way that it was told was so poetic.
And listening to her, as if this girl is a poet,
you can hear that she's talking about so much
more than this bird in the sky.
She's talking about all kinds of states
of being in her perception of things and a range of emotions.
And the language of poetry allows her insight
to not be flattened.
It allows it to thrive and grow.
And poetry is always changing.
It's always growing.
Every time you read a poem, it changes,
it's never flattened into a singular meaning.
So all of that I think translates on a social level
to be why poetry can create.
I like this phrase that you have, through the radical
belonging.
I think that's awesome.
And poetry really can create that on
really just a craft level.
Well, it can get down to you can talk intimately
across generations.
I'm writing a memoir.
Well, I'm doing tweaking right now
that will be a memoir that will be out from Norton
in the next fall next September, and there's a scene in there
where I'm listening to reading in the closet where
I would hide Emily Dickinson.
And I have my knees up and the poetry between my knees,
sitting there with my knees and thinking of her
on the other end of time through time talking to me as if she
were sitting there almost like a kid
because the poem spoke to me in that way.
And poetry can work that way even though my image
of a poet at that time--
she was probably one of the few females
that were all of these--
I always saw poets as old white men
living in England or the East Coast of the United States
where it rained all the time.
That was my image.
But to have that--
but yet the poems could speak to me intimately.
That I always remember Emily Dickinson's voice as being it
was a doorway.
It was like how lonely like a frog,
and it's like what does that mean?
It doesn't matter because it gives me
a place for loneliness to perch in this bog of terror
and that I did.
And that's the power.
You talk about radical belonging,
everybody wants to belong.
I mean, that's even at the root of our--
at our very desperate important leader.
Everybody wants to belong in some ways.
They want to belong in their families,
they want to belong with each other.
They want to feel like they have a place.
And that's where we get into trouble
is when people feel separated and feel like they don't belong
or they're made to feel like they don't belong.
Or to belong means that you have to destroy someone else.
And so then I think that's why we've all been coming,
the world's been coming to poetry
or appears to be coming to poetry during this time is
because there's a place to belong
in the midst of revolution, in the midst of terror,
in the midst of the Earth's destruction, in the midst--
we come to it to find a place, OK, I can belong in this poem,
and in this poem I can memorize it, I can hold it in here,
I can carry it around with me.
And I can go back to it.
I'm nobody, who are you?
I'm nobody too.
That makes two of us.
I'm a little kid.
Tyger, Tyger burning bright, in the forest.
[AUDIO OUT]
Do you all have anything that you wanted to share?
I have one last quick question for Joy before we close up.
But is there anything that you wanted
to either speak about or share or ask one another
before I head to the finale?
I just wanted to say how--
I expressed appreciation for everyone's work on this
anthology because every time I look at or read it, I mean,
it's--
doing part of this work was an honor to be able to serve.
I think we're all in service, poets are in service.
We're in service to the place beyond words.
And then to be able to come together and serve
and in compiling this, which there's
the works of so many people and so many different lands and so
many generations, this is cross-generational.
And it's like when you hold it, it's
just like what a poem can hold.
You can hold-- there's grief in here, there's immense sorrow.
There's joy, there's-- some of the poets are hilarious.
It's all history.
There's so much history winding through here.
It's American history, it's world history.
It's intimate tribal histories that are through here.
And so to be able to be part of this, to be called on to be
part of this is--
to me it's a great honor to help bring this here
to say that, yes, this is a testament of radical belonging.
We belong here, our words belong here.
And it gives me even more respect of there's
an ancestral belonging that is here,
that is part of American ancestry too.
I think whoever you are in American poetry,
this is part of your ancestry right here.
Thank you, Joy.
I also think that the--
I also think that the book called us, we didn't call it.
Like a story calls itself into being,
like a poem calls itself into being, and calls
the people to it.
It feels to me like the book called itself.
And we're, as Joy just said, we're
in service to those works, those words, those people.
I don't feel like--
I mean, and I'm speaking only for myself.
I feel like I am in service to this work.
And that it is sacred in its compilation as well.
Thank you, LeAnne.
So Joy, I have one last question that I'll close with,
and it's more of just out of a curiosity
and it's less intellectual.
I just wanted to know what--
you spoke about this time when you
were eating berries and whale meat,
and I wanted to know what the whale meat tasted like.
Whale meat, it doesn't taste like anything.
That's been on my mind.
I just want to know everything, a poet to describe that to me,
what that was like.
I can imagine it, but I'm really interested in hearing more
about that.
It tasted like Northern Ocean.
Wow.
Yeah, it tasted like that, the ocean.
I love the oceans up there.
I love flying over them.
I like-- I don't know, I have a connection.
I always feel connected to that part of the world.
That's amazing.
It'll make no sense at all, but I do,
and I love the poetry up that way.
Yeah.
Well, I want to thank you all for being here
and for taking time, and for just working with us on this
because we're so honored to have the three of you, including
Bojan, to just be part of this to launch our Institute.
I'm just going to hold up the book for people.
If you have not already purchased this book, When
The Light Of The World Was Subdued,
Our Songs Came Through, A Norton Anthology Of Native Nations
Poetry, please get this.
And I just want to say goodnight to everyone,
and I just am in gratitude for all that you've done.
Thank you.
Mvto.
Thank you so much.
OK.