Heid E. Erdrich on Putting Together New Poets of Native Nations

These poems create a place, somewhere we could go. The place of this poetry feels like a familiar country, even though it is made from many nations. This is not to say that poems are lands—certainly not our lands, which we protect rather than open—and yet these poems do create space. Here in these pages, I can show you the brilliantly lit dimension I have visited for several years. Here is poetry of a new time—an era of witness, of coming into voice, an era of change and of political and cultural resurgence—a time shared within this anthology in poetry forceful and subtle, hysterical and lyrical, ironic and earnest, sorrowful and joyful, and presented in ways harder to define, but made of the recent now, the lived realities that poets of Native nations write.

Native nations are our homelands, our political bodies, our heritages, and the places that make us who we are as Natives in the United States of America. More than 566 Native nations exist in the U.S. and yet “Native American poetry” does not really exist. Our poetry might be hundreds of distinct tribal and cultural poetries as well as American poetry. The extraordinary poets gathered in New Poets of Native Nations have distinct and close ties to specific indigenous nations—including Alaskan Native and island nations. Most are members or citizens of a tribe: Dakota, Diné, Onondaga, Choctaw, and Anishinaabe/Ojibwe (my tribe), and more than a dozen others. These nations determine their own membership and their own acceptance of descendants. My criterion that a poet have a clear connection to a Native nation has nothing to do with blood quantum, the federal basis for recognition of American Indians. Race also has nothing to do with it. Geography is not a factor. These poets live on reservations, in nations, and in cities or towns. Some of their reservations and homelands are urban; most are rural. Many of these poets have relatives across the borders of Mexico and Canada. Most are multiracial. They are also a diverse group in terms of age, gender, education, and poetic styles, but they have one thing in common. Not one of them identifies as “Native American” alone.

For this book, I gave myself the joyful, challenging, and ultimately uncomfortable task of selecting just 21 poets of Native nations from dozens and dozens of writers whose first books were published after the year 2000. I chose the year not because it defines a literary movement or even a generation, but because it is a marker after which poets of Native nations began publishing first books in greater numbers than before. Similarly, the “new” in the title does not mean young, but new to book publication in this century. While much of the work in this anthology is new or recent, I also chose previously published poems. My focus is on authors’ first books and poems that convey poetic vision and promise. First books are gateways, the launching of careers, and the way these poets influence and teach other poets. Many of these poets won first book awards or book competitions. Several were given publication opportunities through the efforts of poet-editors Joseph Bruchac, Allison Hedge Coke, Geary Hobson, and Janet McAdams.

I asked contributors to tell me about their first book experience, and I incorporated their answers into “author notes” along with their suggestions for reading “newer” new poets whose first books are eagerly anticipated. I also asked them about mentors and was surprised to see how often they mentored one another. Solidarity among Native writers, and involvement in professional literary associations, as well as increased access to education and mentorship experiences, particularly through the Institute of American Indian Arts, are no doubt some of the reasons publication has opened up for poets of Native nations in the 21st century. Resurgence of culture, the urgency of environmental and social crisis, and the rise of social media are no doubt compelling reasons these authors are publishing as well. Whatever the catalyst, first books are coming out so fast that unfortunately I was unable to include some of the very recent new poets mentioned by several contributors.

While these poets are new to publishing in this century, “new” is not a theme here. In fact, there is no theme to this anthology. However, there are a few commonalities I note: uses of indigenous languages, hybrid styles, and allusions to or direct mentions of other writers from Native nations. Together, while creating work on their own terms, these new poets from dozens of distinct cultures present a vast diversity of literary approaches and national stances.

Many of these new writers stretch genre boundaries to include image, song, film, visual art, dance, and history in their performances and presentations of their works as well as publish in multiple literary genres. Many of these new writers advance indigenous language revitalization in their work as translators and teachers, and by incorporating their original languages in their poems in English. Yet, while these generalities about these poets hold true for many, this book does not seek to define a shared aesthetic or cultural context. Instead, New Poets of Native Nations collects across a shared experience. These are writers who have grappled with, defined, and redefined the notion of “Native American literature.” As their author notes suggest, they have done so through reading and working with other Native writers of the 20th century (sometimes called the Native American Renaissance) and those poets who closely followed in the late 20th century. This new poetry stands in relation to generations, but it does not bow to that context.

Native American and American Indian poetry anthologies are old. Critic Dean Rader in 2017 wrote: “That a comprehensive anthology of Indigenous American poetry has not been published since 1988 is utterly depressing.” At work on New Poets of Native Nations, I knew he was correct both in fact and in feeling. Just a few anthologies of Native American poetry have been published in the past thirty years—none comprehensive of U.S. Native poets alone. Individual collections of writings by members of a specific tribe or region, mixed-genre anthologies, and works focused on women writers have been more regularly, but not frequently, produced. Even the 1988 anthology Rader refers to ends before the beginnings of the careers of late 20th-century poets of Native nations such as Esther Belin, Kimberly Blaeser, Adrian Louis, Deborah Miranda, Elise Paschen, James Thomas Stevens, Laura Tohe, Luci Tapahonso, Mark Turcotte, and Ofelia Zepeda, to mention just a few. In addition, most Native American poetry anthologies have been published by university presses and are less visible to a general audience. Internet searches for best-selling anthologies under the category of “Native American” or “American Indian” poetry return books published in 1918, 1996, 1988, and 1984, in that order. Clearly, it is time for something new.

The idea for this anthology came to me when I noticed a prominent poet and literary critic’s social media post asking for names of contemporary Native American poets. A few good answers were offered eventually. But responses also suggested the names of 19th-century tribal orators and worse—the names of known ethnic frauds, of which there are several, and even those who use American Indian-sounding pen names who are white. I looked at all the poetry lovers following the post on social media and it struck me that if an important critic of American poetry asked for general input about Native American poets and got very few names of poets from specific Native nations in response, then we Native Americans writing poetry are dangerously obscure and—worse again—obscured by poets who are not Native to any indigenous nation.

Even as I saw that post asking for names of contemporary Native American poets, I knew the answers were a direct result of what Rader found depressing. Readers are being informed by outdated anthologies. As an editor and judge on panels for literary prizes, I have found among my peer poets and critics a general lack of understanding of what Native American writing looks like, what it might be about, what styles it might choose, and how it can be recognized within the whole of American poetry. It has seemed to me that, unless our poetry conforms to some stereotypical notion of Native American history and culture in the past tense or unless it depicts spiritual relationship to the natural world of animals and plants and landscape, it goes unrecognized. We do and we do not write of treaties, battles, and drums. We do and we do not write about eagles, spirits, and canyons. Native poetry may be those things, but it is not only those things. It is also about grass and apologies, bones and joy, marching bands and genocide, skin and social work, and much more. But who would know?

Although a few poets of Native nations are now producing work within the mainstream of American literary publishing, very little poetry by Natives reaches a large audience—few readers are exposed to multiple indigenous authors at a bookstore or library or even in an academic course. There’s simply not enough of our poetry out there where readers can find it. There is no current basis upon which others might understand what poetry by Native Americans is today, in the 21st century. Consequently, I have witnessed editors and prize jurors choose poets they think are Native American. The result is that more often than you would imagine, what is selected is work by non-Natives. This poetry not only misrepresents the lived realities of Native people, but it does our communities real harm by presenting another’s view as our own. Poets who misrepresent themselves as members of Native nations defy each nation’s right to determine its own membership. Native American-themed poetry by non-Natives contributes to the erasure we have so long experienced and that has overwritten our identities in ways that confuse young people who are already at risk and struggling to forge an identity. It is often said that we original inhabitants of the Western Hemisphere are the most written about peoples on earth. But our own writing is often ignored or placed in restrictive contexts that keep us in the past and far from the words contemporary or new. This anthology is meant to bring new audiences to poets of Native nations, including Native audiences, and readers who might then start seeing actual Native-created poetry as part of the larger American poetry conversation.

As I conceived of this book, I wanted to select and present a substantial and strong gathering of work by U.S. Native writers. I wanted to avoid the ways Native American poetry, most edited by non-Natives, has been presented—with a lot of apparatus and within binary notions of an easily digestible “American Indian” history or tradition in order to tie contemporary to past in a kind of literary anthropology. I did not want to add to the body of literature that allows “Indians” to exist in the past, or in relation to the past, but remain invisible in the world we all inhabit now.

I also wanted this book to gather engaging poets in a literary context and within the general market for American poetry. As one who publishes and edits in an American Indian series, I recognize that anthologies from academic presses that do include living Native writers promote those poets, but they also create a kind of isolation. American Indian literary series expressly appeal to those seeking Native American work, so no matter how well-meaning the editors, the work we publish has a very hard time breaking through to a general audience. To put it another way, if you are not looking for authors from Native nations, you rarely find them in the usual places you look for poetry. To put it yet another way, if you are looking at poetry in general, you won’t often stumble upon poets of Native nations since literary publishers tend to have only one or two of us per list.

One of the ways into publishing that many of the poets included here have taken is to submit manuscripts for book awards, but after that, the second book can be quite a challenge. My own publishing arc is an example. My first book was published as a prizewinner in an anonymous competition. When I sought publication of my second book, I was told by more than one publisher that it was “too bad we already have our Indian poet.” That seems shocking now, but it is still true. I moved on to presses that published several Native writers.

After my first book, I determined to be published with other Native American and Ojibwe/Anishinaabe poets and luckily, those opportunities existed because of the work of Janet McAdams and Gordon Henry, two contributors to this anthology. Their influence can be felt here. More than half of the first books by the poets in New Poets of Native Nations are published in series for Native / American Indian and indigenous authors. A few are published by very small literary presses whose distribution is regional, and the very fewest have publishers that regularly publish poetry and that have a national audience and national distribution. Imagine if the same were true of any other culture or racial group in the United States?

The writers in this anthology deserve to be read along with their peers, in the context of the manifold diversity of American poetry, and among the best poets publishing today—especially because some of them are considered the best and most exciting new poets in American literature. Poets in this anthology have won awards from PEN America, the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Lannan Foundation, USA/United States Artists, and other notable organizations. It is my pleasure to present new work by poets whose first books range in age from a few months to nearly eighteen years. Some of these poets have become well known, but to some readers they will be a revelation. I am pleased to introduce all twenty-one poets to a larger audience, perhaps one new to the reality of our persistence as nations. At a time of great change for everyone in this world we all share, it seems people are looking to us, to Indigenous people, perhaps because we have persisted through great change. The time for a new anthology of writings by poets of Native nations is right. Enjoy this place, this space, this dimension these writers open where we can engage deeply with the work of poets whose nations’ long tenure in this place tell us something new and enduring at once.

–Heid E. Erdrich, July 2017

From New Poets of Native Nations. Copyright © 2018 by Heid E. Erdrich. Used with the permission of Graywolf Press.