Indianische Lyrik

In this debut poetry collection, Lakota storyteller Taté Walker steps into the role of a contemporary trickster to continue the purposefully disruptive legacy of a cultural icon: Iktómi, the Spider. The Trickster Riots weaves through the origins of a lost baby queer in love and spiritache to shapeshift into a momma spider exploring what it means to be a good relative, an obliterator of status quo, and a builder of community. Walker's provocative wordplay channels Iktómi with sometimes inharmonious examinations of Indigeneity. The poems weaponize (webonize?) the English language against colonial normativity and navigate the responsibilities of an urban Two Spirit writer carrying and empowering the next generations. Buckle up: The Trickster Riots journeys through fury and disaffection, libratic ceremony, and the lightning bolts of a struggling future ancestor.Taté Walker is a Lakota citizen of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe of South Dakota. They are an award-winning Two Spirit storyteller for outlets like "The Nation," "Everyday Feminism," "Native Peoples," "Apartment Therapy," "Indian Country Today," and "ANMLY." They are also featured in several anthologies: ¿Ohíya Walker is a Lakota citizen of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe and is also Red Lake Ojibwe and Mvskoke Creek. They are an award-winning 13-year-old nonbinary painter and graphic artist combining contemporary and traditional imagery and mediums.

This collection of Jessica Mehta's powerful, beautiful, vulnerable work spans "from dates so long ago I can't even recall" to her most current poetry in the midst of a pandemic. Her poems call our attention to the unsung disappearance of Indigenous women, the cultural genocide that still continues, the eating disorders that consume us from within, and to love, family, and the courageous choice to see the world from a different angle in the face of death.

Spawn is a braided collection of brief, untitled poems, a coming-of-age lyric set in the Mashteuiatsh Reserve on the shores of Lake Piekuakami (Saint-Jean) in Quebec. Undeniably political, Gill's poems ask: How can one reclaim a narrative that has been confiscated and distorted by colonizers?The poet's young avatar reaches new levels on Nintendo, stays up too late online, wakes to her period on class photo day, and carves her lovers' names into every surface imaginable. Encompassing twenty-first-century imperialism, coercive assimilation, and 90s-kid culture, the collection is threaded with the speaker's desires, her searching: for fresh water to "take the edge off," for a "habitable word," for sex. For her "true north"--her voice and her identity.Like the life cycle of the ouananiche that frames this collection, the speaker's journey is cyclical; immersed in teenage moments of confusion and life on the reserve, she retraces her scars to let in what light she can, and perhaps in the end discover what to "make of herself".

Our Bearings is a collection of narrative poetry that examines and celebrates Anishinaabe life in modern Minneapolis. Crafted around the four elements - earth, air, water, and fire - the poems are a beautifully layered discourse between landscapes, stories, and the people who inhabit them. Throughout the collection, McGlennen weaves the natural elements of Minnesota with rich historical commentary and current images of urban Native life. Reverence for wildlife and foliage is pierced by the sharp man-made skylines of Minneapolis while McGlennen reckons with the heavy impact of industrial progress on the souls and everyday lives of individuals.<BR><BR> While working with both traditional and contemporary form, McGlennen's unique use of space and rhythm creates poetry that is both captivating and accessible. Our Bearings does not attempt to speak for a population; rather it offers vibrant stories and moments that give voice to pieces of a large and complex tapestry of experiences. Through keen observation and a deep understanding of Native life in Minneapolis, McGlennen has created a timely collection that contributes beautifully to the important conversation about contemporary urban Native life in North America and globally.

Childhood Thoughts and Water is a collection of Beat Poetry, Spoken Word, Performance Art and Lyrical Verse. This is a work which journeys into the memories and events of an Urban Indigenous warrior's struggles to reconnect with a language and culture that is seemingly always almost out of reach. The common theme of reconnecting with nature and with water is interspersed with the imagery of childhood recollections and anecdotes about life and love, aspirations and defeats, and the desire to achieve greatness in spite of the obstacles and barriers inherent in a life lived on the fringes, in the shadows and on the streets, in the spotlight and behind the backstage curtain.

Elaine Gerard's voice is a trap. She lures you in with a gentle song, then leaves your soul standing alone in the wind beneath a wild sky. This is poetry that soars with a mature song; a somehow haunted memory of a dream you wish you could remember and pray you could forget. Welcome a new voice in American poetry.

In his new and selected, Jim Barnes crafts bliss from the urgent and allusive with an enigmatic voice that is often mysterious.<BR><BR>A CHOCTAW CHIEF HELPS PLAN         <BR> A FESTIVAL IN MEMORY OF         <BR> PUSHMATAHA'S BIRTHDAY<BR><BR> We know he liked chock beer and watermelon<BR> and raced sleek ponies in the dead of night.<BR> We'll give him that. We'll have to open up<BR> the valley to whites and those Chickasaws,<BR> or it's sure no go. But we'll keep it pure. . . <BR><BR> A lot depends on image. Use your masks.<BR> Don't wear boots. Speak the language if you can. . . <BR>  

owlmouth is a collection of poems about transformation. Michele Marie Desmarais (Métis, Dakota, European) offers perspectives on the environment, being-in-relationship, the need for change and the process of healing. These poems are an expression of an Indigenous worldview replete with relationships between human and other-than-human persons. owlmouth is about the possibilities of transformation within a life—in the face of colonialism and the sometime liminal identities on the urban rez. Reflecting on experiences of historical trauma due to the Indian Residential/Boarding Schools, as well as climate change and the responsibilities we have for our relatives who include both human and other-than-human persons, owlmouth is also about intergenerational resiliency, healing and the necessities of transforming the dominant culture. Depending on the Nation or culture, an owl may bring medicine, wisdom, or death. These poems explore all three within the overall theme of transformation, and, in doing so, reflect upon belonging, home, Indigenous/Native American perspectives, and the intersection of multiple moments, beings and cultures.

Unflinching and magnetic, the language and structure of Aurum never strays from its dedication to revealing the prominent reality of Native people being marginalized and discarded in the wake of industrial progress. While uncovering different forms of oppression that estrange Native Americans from their own land, these poems explore the raw and disturbing aspects of living in the wastelands of contemporary America.<BR><BR>Aurum does not attempt to provide answers or solutions. Instead, it splits the belly of North America and lays it bare into powerful words and unconventional structures. Brutally honest and incredibly fine tuned, this collection digs up 'the grit where teeth once rooted' to show the objectification of Native peoples and cultures for the grotesque erasure it really is.<BR><BR> With images that taunt, disturb, and fascinate, Aurum captures the vibrantly original language in Santee Frazier's first collection, Dark Thirty, while taking on a completely new voice and rhythm. Each poem is vivid and memorable, beckoning to be read again and again as the words lend an enhanced experience each time. Frazier has crafted a wrought-iron collection of poetry that never shies away from a truth that America often attempts to ignore.

This book contains poems that express thoughts, and feelings on a number of different topics of every day life. It touches on social issues, spirituality, family, love and intimacy. If you're looking for a collection of poems written from a Black perspective-diverse poems of family, spirituality, race, and social issues as well as love, loss, and intimacy-this is the one. Poems of Life and Love will satisfy your soul.

Seven Sacred Truths presents a powerful exploration of an Indigenous woman's healing journey. Seeing the world through "brown" eyes, poet Wanda John-Kehewin makes new meaning of the past, present, and future through a consideration of Love, Wisdom, Truth, Honesty, Respect, Humility, and Courage. By sharing her views on these Seven Sacred Truths and what they meant to her growing up, John-Kehewin instigates a therapeutic process of restoration and transformation. Her Seven Sacred Truths uncovers new meaning in the written word - meaning that can be shared with others who have lived trauma or who want insight into it. John-Kehewin strives to create a safe space and provide the opportunity to experience another perspective; she invites readers to embark on their own healing journeys. The closer you are to the truth, she writes, the freer you become.<BR><BR>Wanda John-Kehewin uses writing as a therapeutic medium to understand and respond to the near-decimation of First Nations cultures and traditions. Recipient of the World Poetry Foundation's Empowered Poet Award for her first collection, In the Dog House.

Instruments of the True Measure charts the coordinates and intersections of land, history, and culture. Lyrical passages map the parallel lives of ancestral figures and connect dispossessions of the past to lived experiences of the present. Shawnee history informs the collection, and Da's fascination with uncovering and recovering brings the reader deeper into the narrative of Shawnee homeland. Images of forced removal and frontier violence reveal the wrenching loss and reconfiguration of the Shawnee as a people. The body and history become lands that are measured and plotted with precise instruments. Surveying and geography underpin the collection, but even as Da' investigates these signifiers of measurement, she pushes the reader to interrogate their function within the stark atrocities of American history. Da' laments this harsh dichotomy, observing that America's mathematical point of beginning is located in the heart of her tribe's homeland: ""I do not have the Shawnee words to describe this place; the notation that is available to me is 40°38'32.61'' N 80°31'9.76'' W.''

In Jessica Mehta’s tenth book, Drag Me Through the Mess uncovers what it means to be an indigenous woman in a society where "NDNs" are seen as fashion accessories at best and obsolete at worst. Each poem grips the reader and reveals a king of honest emotion and telling that’s almost unnerving. All the ugliness and hurts of life are explored with a kind of lyrical beauty that causes deep contrasts and juxtapositions. No matter the subject, readers will relate to the work and themes because at the heart of each is a shared experience.The "mess" of life is one everyone shares, and Mehta touches on emotions and feelings at subcutaneous levels. Inspired by the works of Li-Young Lee, Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, Kim Addonizio, and all the great of confessional poetry, Mehta finds a way to tap into themes we’d rather turn away from and see them with a lens attuned to discovery—and ultimately healing.Drag Me Through the Mess takes the reader on a journey that delves into the darkest parts of the human experience before bringing them into a soothing light. Featuring perfect word choices, strong line breaks, and recurring totems that tie the collection together, Mehta’s tenth book is perhaps her strongest. It’s a collection that showcases the full spectrum of the human experience that will leave readers saying, "I thought I was the only one." It’s beyond confessional because confessions are often shrouded in shame. Here, there’s no asking of forgiveness.

Bad Fame muses on the perplexities and certainties of the human condition, often in soaring eulogies and searing elegies. The personal and regional tributes unravel the universally familiar and pertinent.

This series of interconnected dramatic monologues illustrates the true stories of frontier women and children who were stranded on and settled along the trails to the West. Spanning the school year 1889–90, we follow the intimate day-to-day lives of a school teacher, her students, and their parents in the mythical town of Cottonwood.<BR>

Compositions of the Dead Playing Flutes embraces the joys of spirit and flesh, while acknowledging that death is an ever-present shadow. Her lyrics sometime sear, sometime soar, and are rooted in nature and her lived environment

Through detailed images of ancestors and wilderness places, through renderings of story, tribal history, and family ritual, award-winning Anishinaabe author Kimberly Blaeser explores our mesh of tangled origins. Apprenticed to Justice is a collection of vividly rendered lyrical and narrative poems that trace the complex inheritances of 21st century Native America.

This volume testifies to the need to protect the remarkable ruins of the Indigenous North American city of Blood Run and the sacred remains she guards there in mounded tombs. The persona poems herein emanate its character embraced in architectural accomplishment designed in accordance with the sun and moon and multitudes of stars above.

It's a far cry from the island off the Norwegian coast, where Helen Barth Strømberg lived an artist's life for five years, to the High Plains and canyons of the western U.S.A.The move was the result of the poet meeting the love of her life - Crow, a Cherokee Indian - and the poems and prose pieces gathered here are the passionate expressions of the love felt for a man and respect for his special world: a world of spirit and flesh, man and beast, dance and ritual, song and legend, light and dark.The link may lie in one of Helen's forebears, who was from the Sami people of Northern Norway, whom we call Lapps. To them, the reindeer and transhumance; to the Native Americans, the bison and the buffalo hunt so graphically described in "Predator". But even in the harsh images of "Nature", the author finds room for love:Tell me you do not feel it, tell meyour heart does not pound like a buffalo stampede, wheneverI am near...