Grasses Grasses Grasses: A Night of Poetry & Healing with Six Indigenous Poets
Join us for a reading borne out of a conversation between award-winning Ogala-Lakota poet Layli Long Soldier and MarginShift co-curator Thomas Ahneesan (Santee Sioux, Dakota Nation) about the mass graves of Indigenous children discovered recently in Canada. The evening will feature a sampling of North American Indigenous poets for a night of poetry and a Medicine Wheel ritual for the women and children erased by settler colonialism. Reading will feature Layli Long Soldier, as well as poets: Trevino Brings Plenty (Portland/Lakota), Thomas Ahneesan (Tacoma/Sioux), Cedar Sigo (Suquamish), Laura Da' (Eastern Shawnee) and Fabian Romero (Purépecha). They will be joined by Howie Echo-Hawk.
Howie Echo-Hawk
Howie Echo-Hawk is a Queer, nonbinary “comedian” and all around Native person. All writing is FOR INDIGENOUS PEOPLE. insta/twitter: @howieechohawk.
Trevino Brings Plenty
Trevino L. Brings Plenty, MFA, enrolled member of the Cheyenne River Sioux Reservation. Brings Plenty is a filmmaker, musician, and poet. His work has appeared in Yellow Medicine Review, Red Ink Magazine, World Literature Today, Plume, Prairie Schooner, North American Review, Waxwing, Poetry, New Poets of Native Nations. Brings Plenty’s books are Wakpá Wanáǧi Ghost River (2015) and Real Indian Junk Jewelry (2012).
Lauren Da’
A poet and a public-school teacher, Laura Da’ studied creative writing at the University of Washington and the Institute of American Indian Arts A lifetime resident of the Pacific Northwest, Da’ is the recipient of fellowships from the Native Arts and Culture Foundation, Richard Hugo House, and the Jack Straw Writers Program and has been a writer in residence for Richard Hugo House and is the current Poet Laureate for the City of Redmond. She is the author of Tributaries, winner of the American Book Award, and Instruments of the True Measure, winner of the Washington State Book Award. Da’ is Eastern Shawnee. She lives near Renton with her husband and son.
Cedar Sigo
Cedar Sigo is a poet and member of the Suquamish Tribe. He studied writing and poetics at Naropa University. His most recent books are (poetry) All This Time and (lectures) Guard the Mysteries both published by Wave Books in 2021. He received a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artist's Award in 2022.
Layli Long Soldier
Layli Long Soldier holds a B.F.A. from the Institute of American Indian Arts and an M.F.A. from Bard College. Her poems have appeared in POETRY Magazine, The New York Times, The American Poet, The American Reader, The Kenyon Review, BOMB, and elsewhere. She is the recipient of an NACF National Artist Fellowship, a Lannan Literary Fellowship, a Whiting Award, and was a finalist for the 2017 National Book Award. She has also received the 2018 PEN/Jean Stein Award, the 2018 National Book Critics Circle Award, a 2021 Academy of Arts and Letters Award for Literature, and the 2021 Michael Murphy Memorial Poetry Prize in the UK. She is the author of Chromosomory (Q Avenue Press, 2010) and WHEREAS (Graywolf Press, 2017). She resides in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Fabian Romero
Purepécha poet-scholar Fabian Romero was born in Michoacán, Mexico and raised in the Pacific Northwest. They co-founded and participated in several writing and performance groups. Their scholarship, poetry and experimental films are rooted in Indigequeer and immigrant experiences.
Thomas Ahneesan
Thomas Ahneesan is pursuing an MFA in creative writing; meddling with her favorites: poetry, hybrid and the lyric essay. She has worked previously as a journalist, writing profiles on local artists, events, and the music scene. She is also a local musician, writing songs and playing guitar with her brother. Her poetry explores Native American mixed-blood identity, the camaraderie that can be found in poverty, and intergenerational trauma with healing humor & tenderness. She is working on her first book of poems, entitled RUIN EVERYTHING. She writes columns for Cultural Daily under the auspices of her manager, Chiwan Choi, from essays & reviews to woo-woo ghost stories.
