When Cynthia Cruz describes Joan Naviyuk Kane’s latest collection as a series of poems that “both shows and enacts how a self is brought to being through the abyss,” I think of Kane’s own words about poetry: as “a place of refuge and possibility, a generative space. Not a space of loss, but contingence.” What is a home in the face of dispossession? Inheritance in the face of rupture and colonial erasure? And what is the role of language on behalf of continuity and continuation? We explore all of these questions and much more, both generally, but also quite granularly within the context of the indigenous circumpolar North.

For the bonus audio archive, Joan contributes the reading of a long poem, one that she is still working on, called “Provisionally.” She grants us a sneak peek of a poem that she has been drafting and revising for a year, in its current provisional form. This joins many remarkable contributions— from everyone from Layli Long Soldier to Dionne Brand, Isabella Hammad to Arthur Sze, Jorie Graham to Danez Smith. Find out how to subscribe to the bonus audio, and about the other potential benefits and rewards of joining the Between the Covers community as a listener-supporter at the show’s Patreon page.

Finally, here is the BookShop for today’s conversation.

Today’s episode is a classic from the archives, a conversation from 2019 with Brandon Shimoda about his book The Grave on the Wall. While the book centers on an exploration of Shimoda’s grandfather’s internment at Fort Missoula during World War II, it is really an interrogation of America that extends both directions in time from that moment. Forts such as these, that imprisoned Japanese and Japanese-Americans during the war, were also previously used to fight the Indian wars that established white dominance over Native lands, and are now today being used as detention centers/concentration camps for the refugees and immigrants from our southern border. The Grave on the Wall is also an engagement with photography and (mis)representation, memory and memorialization and asks the question of what it means to memorialize something that is ongoing, that has never ended.

For the bonus audio archive Brandon Shimoda contributes a reading from Etel Adnan’s long poem “Fog,” a poem she dedicated to him. This joins contributions from everyone from Isabella Hammad to Dionne Brand, Natalie Diaz to Kaveh Akbar and more. To learn how to subscribe to the bonus audio and about all the other potential rewards and benefits of joining the Between the Covers community as a listener-supporter head over to the show’s Patreon page.

What if we were to take seriously that we, as humans, aren’t the sole authors of our world, that there are other intelligences at play, that we are only one of many agents of change and transformation, and that “we” aren’t even entirely ourselves given that “we” are composed of many “others,” many strangers that nevertheless make up what we call a “self”—what would a philosophy and politics emerging from this look like, one where we weren’t the center or central agent of the story? And what would we do if we discovered that the way we’ve been responding to the things we want to change—colonialism, racism, fascism, environmental devastation, and more—what if something about the way we oppose these forces actually reinscribes them, where the very way we are responding to the crisis becomes part of the crisis? We explore these animating philosophical questions of Báyò Akómoláfé today and take them also into the realm of words— from what it means when Báyò says “poetry precedes language” to how to tell stories while recognizing, in their remarkable power, their danger and limitations. We talk koans and tricksters, monsters and fugitives, shifting shape, following cracks, making sanctuary and much more.

If you enjoy today’s conversation consider transforming yourself from a listener to a listener-supporter by joining the Between the Covers community. Find out more about all the potential benefits and rewards of doing so at the show’s Patreon page.

Finally the BookShop for today.