Farewell from Montana’s Poets Laureate
“Put down that bag of potato chips, that white bread, that bottle of pop. Turn off that cellphone, computer, and remote control,” begins a poem by current U.S. Poet Laureate Joy Harjo. She continues, “Welcome your spirit back from its wandering. It may return in pieces, in tatters. Gather them together. They will be happy to be found after being lost for so long.”
As the state and the nation are emerging from a dark time, a time when our spirits were tested by fear, exhaustion and grief, M.L. Smoker and I are ending our tenure as Montana Poets Laureate. It was, of course, an unprecedented tenure. Charged with bringing poetry to rural and urban communities throughout our wide state, we were six months in when the Covid-19 pandemic struck, canceling our events in schools, libraries and other public venues for the next year and a half.
Mandy and I had asked to be nominated together for this position because we both believe in collaboration—in art, in education, in civic life, in friendship. As members of marginalized communities, we also hoped that our voices might serve as inspiration, especially for American Indian and LGBTQ+ people, especially for the young. We believe in poetry’s power to remind us of our shared humanity and creativity. In the face of the pandemic, we were challenged to find ways to convey that message in new and unanticipated ways.
Like many of you, we became experts on Zoom. We were able to visit many classes and audiences because of it. We gave the keynote for the Montana Library Association. (Our heroes!) We interviewed each other for NPR’s Story Corps. For the virtual Montana Book Festival, we sent videos of each of us reading our poems outdoors in sites across Montana: Flathead Lake, the pictographs at Hellgate Canyon. We were invited by the Missoula Art Museum to contribute to their Love Letters to the Collection, a project that entailed choosing an artwork from their Contemporary American Indian Art Collection and writing a poem in response. We chose a beaded vintage map by Lakota artist Molly Murphy Adams that depicts where Indigenous women have gone missing or been murdered or assaulted in the Missoula and Flathead reservation area. The poems were mounted at the museum and recorded in a video available at the museum and its website. I created a Letters to a Young Poet project. The Billings Library supplies stamps and paper for young people to write back in real letters!
In the meantime, Mandy’s poems appeared in two national anthologies, When the Light of the World was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through and Living Nations, Living Words, both edited by Joy Harjo. The poems in the latter book are accessible at the same time within an interactive map of First Peoples, sponsored by the Library of Congress https://www.loc.gov.
And we’re not done yet! Even though we will no longer be laureates, we will be continuing our collaboration. We are currently writing a poem for a video by Big Sky Film Institute on Montana waterways. And we are very excited that we have just received an Academy of American Poets Poets Laureate Fellowship. For it, we will visit art and history museums across Montana, writing poems and conducting workshops.
Beaded map by Lakota artist Molly Murphy Adams depicting
abduction/assault/murder sites of Indigenous women
We want to thank Humanities Montana for their incredible support without which most poets could not afford to be named laureates, who provide funding and technical support to connect us with the people who host us. We are grateful to Free Verse for sending us into classrooms in Billings. Natalie Peeterse helped us with recording, including a video made outside on her deck in January 2020 for an art center in Mississippi. We must have looked odd to them, dressed in our heavy down coats and boots! We want to also thank all the people who reached out to us, who wrote with us, who welcomed us. For Mandy and me, it has been a gift and a treasure—teaching, learning and serving during difficult times—to share our love and appreciation of poetry with all of you.
State of the Arts | Summer 2021
Tags: Native News, MAC News, Arts Education and Montana Poet Laureate