Songs at the Confluence: Indigenous Poets on Place
This Native American Heritage Month, we're thrilled to announce our partnership with Tippet Rise Art Center and In-Na-Po (Indigenous Nations' Poets) to offer the digital event Songs at the Confluence: Indigenous Poets on Place, taking place on Friday, December 4th, at 7 PM EST with a recording now available to watch.
Curated by poets Kimberly Blaeser and Jake Skeets of In-Na-Po, the event drew inspiration from W. W. Norton's recent collection When the Light of the World Was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through: A Norton Anthology of Native Nations Poetry. The program's focus is on place and its importance to Indigenous poets and their writing.
Clockwise from top left: Kimberly Blaeser, Jake Skeets (photo by Bear Guerra), LeAnne Howe, and Jennifer Foerster (photo by Richard Blue Cloud Castaneda).
Clockwise from top left: Sy Hoahwah, Layli Long Soldier (photo by S L O W K I N G), M. L. Smoker, and Brandy Nalani McDougall.
The evening's program includes short films by emerging and celebrated Indigenous poets, in which they will read their own work and recite other poems from the anthology. A discussion between LeAnne Howe (Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma) and Jennifer Foerster (Mvskoke (Creek) Nation of Oklahoma), two of the anthology's editors, is also featured, as well as video of Tippet Rise's inspiring landscape and musical programs. Readers include Kimberly Blaeser (Anishinaabe–White Earth Nation), Jake Skeets (Diné), Brandy Nalani McDougall (Kanaka Maoli), Sy Hoahwah (Yapaituka Comanche and Southern Arapaho), Layli Long Soldier (Oglala Lakota) and M. L. Smoker (Assiniboine and Sioux). Poems by the late poets Adrian Louis (Lovelock Paiute), b: william bearhart (Anishinaabe–St. Croix), and Louis Little Coon Oliver (Mvskoke) are also performed.
Our thanks to the Academy of American Poets for their support.
