F156. Language Back: A Reading & Conversation with Indigenous Poets, Sponsored by Indigenous Nations Poets
Friday, February 9, 2024
10:35 am to 11:50 am
Simultaneous with the contemporary Land Back movement of Tribal Nations is an equally urgent call for Indigenous literary sovereignty. This focus on writing Indigenous includes a strong push for creators to employ tribal languages and their inherent structures—for Language Back. Poet contributors to The Diné Reader, Jake Skeets, Luci Tapahonso, and Esther Belin, will read recent work and discuss how their creative work maps itself at the intersections of tribal language, poetic form, and place.
This event will take place in person in the Kansas City Convention Center and will be livestreamed for virtual audiences. All livestreamed events include open captions and ASL interpretation.
Participants
Kimberly Blaeser, past Wisconsin Poet Laureate and Founding Director of Indigenous Nation Poets, holds the Mackey Chair in Creative Writing at Beloit College. Anishinaabe from White Earth Nation and Professor Emerita at UW—Milwaukee, she also teaches at IAIA. Her most recent book is “Ancient Light.”
Jake Skeets is the author of Eyes Bottle Dark with a Mouthful of Flowers, winner of the National Poetry Series, Kate Tufts Discovery Award, American Book Award, and Whiting Award. He is from the Navajo Nation and teaches at the University of Oklahoma.
Esther Belin (Diné) is the author of two poetry books and coeditor of The Diné Reader: An Anthology of Navajo Literature. Belin’s visual art combines a variety of disciplines and works to reframe the mythical primitivism often associated with Indigenous cultures. She is a citizen of the Navajo Nation and lives on the Colorado side of the four corners. Belin is a member of Saad Bee Hózhǫ́: Diné Writers’ Collective, and teaches in the Native American and Indigenous studies department at Fort Lewis College and in the low-residency MFA program at the Institute of American Indian Arts.
Luci Tapahonso is Professor Emerita of English Literature (University of New Mexico 2016) and served as the inaugural Poet Laureate of the Navajo Nation. She is a recipient of a 2018 Native Arts and Culture Foundation Artist Fellowship. She is the author of three children’s books and six books of poetry including A Radiant Curve. She has delivered keynote addresses at several conferences and institutions including Harvard University, Gallup Central High School, Kenyon College, Institute of American Indian Arts, the Tbisili International Literature Festival in the Republic of Georgia.
