The University of Arizona Press
Date: Wednesday, April 24, 2024
Time: 7 p.m. – 8 p.m., CDT
Where: Woodland Pattern Book Center, 720 E. Locust St., Milwaukee, WI
Kimberly Blaser, author of Ancient Light, and Laura Tohe, author of Tséyi’ / Deep in the Rock: Reflections on Canyon de Chelly, will be featured in a poetry reading as part of the Native Writers in the 21st Century series at Woodland Pattern Book Center. Joining them is Elise Pashen, author of Tallchief. Blaeser is an Anishinaabe activist and environmentalist enrolled at White Earth Nation. She is a professor emerita at University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee and an Institute of American Indian Arts MFA faculty member. Tohe is Diné and is the current Navajo Nation Poet Laureate.
This in-person event is free and open to the public. Register here.
About Ancient Light:
Elegiac and powerful, Ancient Light uses lyric, narrative, and concrete poems to give voice to some of the most pressing ecological and social issues of our time.
With vision and resilience, Kimberly Blaeser’s poetry layers together past, present, and futures. Against a backdrop of pandemic loss and injustice, MMIW (Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women), hidden graves at Native American boarding schools, and destructive environmental practices, Blaeser’s innovative poems trace pathways of kinship, healing, and renewal. They celebrate the solace of natural spaces through sense-laden geo-poetry and picto-poems. With an Anishinaabe sensibility, her words and images invoke an ancient belonging and voice the deep relatedness she experiences in her familiar watery regions of Minnesota.
About Tséyi’ / Deep in the Rock: Reflections on Canyon de Chelly:
Diné poet Laura Tohe draws deeply on her heritage to create lyrical writings that are rooted in the canyon but universal in spirit, while photographer Stephen Strom captures images that reveal the very soul of this ancient place. Tohe’s words take readers on a journey from the canyon rim down sheer sandstone walls to its rich bottomlands; from the memory of Kit Carson’s rifle shots and the forced march of the Navajo people to the longings of modern lovers. Her poems view the land through Diné eyes, blending history, tradition, and personal reflection while remaining grounded in Strom’s delicate yet striking images. These photographs are not typical of most southwestern landscapes. Strom’s eye for the subtleties and mysticism of the canyon creates powerful images that linger in the mind long after the pages are turned, compelling us to look at the earth in new ways.
