Layli Long Soldier, Mark Turcotte & Tanaya Winder

In honor of Native American Heritage Month, Native poets Layli Long Soldier, Mark Turcotte & Tanaya Winder read from When the Light of the World Was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through: A Norton Anthology of Native Nations Poetry, edited by U.S. Poet Laureate Joy Harjo. This program takes place November 19 at 11:30 am Central, register for the program here.

More about When the Light of the World Was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through:

United States Poet Laureate Joy Harjo gathers the work of more than 160 poets, representing nearly 100 indigenous nations, into the first historically comprehensive Native poetry anthology.

This landmark anthology celebrates the indigenous peoples of North America, the first poets of this country, whose literary traditions stretch back centuries. Opening with a blessing from Pulitzer Prize–winner N. Scott Momaday, the book contains powerful introductions from contributing editors who represent the five geographically organized sections. Each section begins with a poem from traditional oral literatures and closes with emerging poets, ranging from Eleazar, a seventeenth-century Native student at Harvard, to Jake Skeets, a young Diné poet born in 1991, and including renowned writers such as Luci Tapahanso, Natalie Diaz, Layli Long Soldier, and Ray Young Bear. When the Light of the World Was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through offers the extraordinary sweep of Native literature, without which no study of American poetry is complete.

Praise for When the Light of the World Was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through:

“This anthology is revelatory and stunning…It shows the remarkable strength and diversity of Native poetry, which vitalizes all of American poetry. It is essential reading.”
—Arthur Sze, National Book Award–winning author of Sight Lines

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 Online, 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 and the 2018 National Book Critics Circle Award. She is the author of Chromosomory (Q Avenue Press, 2010) and WHEREAS (Graywolf Press, 2017). She resides in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

MARK TURCOTTE (Turtle Mountain Anishinaabe) is author of four poetry collections, including The Feathered Heart and Exploding Chippewas. His work has received recognitions from Wordcraft Circle, the Wisconsin Arts Board, and the Lannan Foundation. He lives in Chicago, where he teaches in the English Department at DePaul University.

TANAYA WINDER is an author, singer / songwriter, poet, motivational speaker and educator who comes from an intertribal lineage of Southern Ute, Pyramid Lake Paiute, and Duckwater Shoshone Nations where she is an enrolled citizen. She holds a BA from Stanford University and an MFA from the University of New Mexico. She is the author of Why Storms are Named After People and Bullets Remain Nameless and Words Like Love. Tanaya’s performances and talks emphasize the importance of “heartwork” – the life path one is meant to follow by using his/her/their gifts and passions. She blends storytelling, singing, and spoken word to teach about different expressions of love.