F163.
Ekphrasis & Indigenous Poetics: Writing the Space the Spaces In-Between
Friday, February 9, 2024
12:10 pm to 1:25 pm
Ekphrastic poetry places text in conversation with image and sound. In the practice, a dialogue emerges between the two and creates a third space, one that questions how embodied experience is intimately connected to witness and gaze. In this panel, five Indigenous poets will discuss how they employ that third space in their own poetics, complicating the underlying power dynamics between gaze and object, by sharing examples of their own work and engaging with the audience.
Participants
Halee Kirkwood is a poet and descendant of the Fond Du Lac Band of Lake Superior Ojibwe. They are a 2023–25 Jerome Hill Artist Fellow, an inaugural In-Na-Po fellow, and were a 2019–20 Loft Mentor Series Fellow. Their work has been published in Poetry Magazine, Ecotone, Poem-A-Day, and others.
Annie Wenstrup received her MFA in creative writing from Stonecoast (Summer 2022). She's a Smithsonian Arctic Studies Fellow and an Indigenous Nations Poetry Fellow. She serves on the Kachemak Bay Writers' Conference Advisory Committee.
Melanie Merle is a member of the Chickasaw Nation and the winner of the James Welch Prize for Poetry (Poetry Northwest). She is an associate editor for the literary and art journal, Inverted Syntax, and a teacher for Lighthouse Writers Workshop in Denver, Colorado.
Elise Paschen (Osage) is the author of four books of poetry, most recently, The Nightlife. Her poems have appeared in A Norton Anthology of Native Nations Poetry and Poetry, among others. She is the editor or coeditor of numerous anthologies, including Poetry Speaks and The Eloquent Poem.
Tacey M. Atsitty, Diné, won the Wisconsin Brittingham Prize in Poetry and is publishing her second book, (At) Wrist (2023). Her work has appeared in EPOCH, Poetry Northwest, Poem-A-Day, Sonnets from the American, etc. She is an inaugural In-Na-Po fellow and a PhD candidate at Florida State University.
