Poets join roundtable on Native American verse

Gulfen Demiray Guest Writer

Renowned contemporary Native American poets Janet McAdams, Kim Blaeser and Gordon Henry will come to Vassar on Nov. 8 for the poetry roundtable “Earthworks: A Night of Native American Poetry.” Each poet will read from their new works and discuss them in an open question-and-answer forum starting at 5:30 p.m. in Sanders Auditorium. Organizers of the event hope the roundtable will add momentum to building a Native American Studies correlate.

Postdoctoral Fellow in American Culture Molly McGlennen coordinated the event. McGlennen is a scholar in Native American poetry and literature and is a poet herself. “I think it will be such an exciting event for students and faculty and the community at large to get the chance to hear these voices—important, important, American voices,” she said.

Janet McAdams, the Robert P. Hubbard Professor of Poetry at Kenyon College, is the editor of Earthworks, a book series that focuses on Native American poetry and pulls together works from different contemporary Native American authors.

Her own poetry has been published in North American Review, Poetry, Women’s Review of Books and Kenyon Review, among others. McAdams has also published reviews, articles and essays in numerous journals, including SAIL: Studies in American Indian Literature.

Another guest, Kim Blaeser, who is of Anishinaabe descent, is the author of Absentee Indians and Other Poems, Apprenticed from Justice and the poetry collection Trailing You. She currently teaches creative writing, Native American literature and American nature writing at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee.

Gordon Henry, also of Anishinaabe descent, is an Associate Professor of English at Michigan State University, and has published many literary works, including the novel The Light People and the stories The Prisoner of Haiku and Sleeping in Rain. He is best known for his poetry anthology, Songs From This Earth On Turtle’s Back: Contemporary American Indian Poetry.

In addition to a night of poetry at the College, the event also intends to raise awareness for developing a Native American Studies correlate. “Building a correlate in Native American Studies within the American Culture Program is certainly one of the main goals surrounding the faculty seminars on Native Studies and the growth of the American Culture Program in general,” said McGlennen.

McGlennen and Professor of English Patricia Wallace will co-teach the Introduction to Native American Studies course next year. McGlennen will also have a course entitled Native American Women in the spring semester. The curriculum will expand to include courses developed and taught by the professors who have been involved in the discipline for the past two years.

Following the first Introduction to Native American Studies course she taught in Fall 2006, McGlennan said that students have expressed interest in developing a correlate. “It is my understanding that the push for a correlate in Native American Studies was student-initiated,” she said. “Students who were doing research projects and papers on Native American topics did not have an entire course or courses allotted to the study, or even a ‘go-to’ person.”

McGlennen feels poetry provides powerful insight to the culture. “I think there’s a genuine curiosity among non-Native people about contemporary Native cultures, the arts and indigenous politics and misrepresented histories,” she said. “I think poetry addresses all of that. You can’t read the poetry of Blaeser, or Henry, or McAdams without understanding the specific cultural contexts from which they write.”

The Office of the Dean of Faculty, the American Culture program and the English Department are co-sponsoring the event. “A number of faculty and administrators are supporting this event for a couple reasons: our love of poetry and our interest in trying to develop a Native American Studies curriculum within the American Culture program,” said Adjunct Associate Professor of English Judith Nichols.

The roundtable will also discuss the poetry in the context of diversity. “Talking about poetry in the context of literary studies or cultural studies can be healing or edifying for the community of people who participate in the conversation,” said Nichols. “Our community clearly needs to continue to pursue discourse on race—and poetry can help us do this deliberately.”