Description
When Susan Landgraf received an Academy of American Poets’ Laureate in 2020, her project proposal included teaching more than a dozen workshops on the Muckleshoot Indian Reservation that would culminate in a Muckleshoot poetry book. Landgraf sees writing as both opening oneself to vulnerability and a feeling of empowerment. She believes that poetry can save lives, and worked to facilitate a teaching environment that welcomed each voice. Her exercises, prompts, and discussions sparked creativity and critical thinking, and invited young people and elders to reflect on their history, culture, and current lives in meaningful ways.
The collection features compositions by fifty-four poets ranging from elementary school age to adult—most from the Muckleshoot Tribal School—along with Samuel Obrovac’s artwork inspired by several of the included poems. Expressive and moving, their pieces are about searching and belonging, loss and discovery. The writers share a common theme—a reaching back and a reaching forward—sometimes in the same poem. Their work highlights Muckleshoot history and culture, but also spotlights individual histories, lessons, beliefs, and emotions.
Muckleshoot is the Native name for the prairie on which the 6.128 square-mile reservation was established in 1857. Federally recognized as descendants of the Duwamish and Upper Puyallup people who inhabited Central Puget Sound thousands of years before non-Indian settlement, approximately 3,600 people live on the reservation, making the Muckleshoot Tribe one of the largest Native American tribes in Washington State.
Poet and journalist Susan Landgraf is the author of What We Bury Changes the Ground and The Inspired Poet, a book of writing exercises. Her newest title is Crossings. She has taught at Highline College and Jiao Tong University in Shanghai, as well as the Port Townsend Writers’ Conference. She served as Poet Laureate of Auburn, Washington, from 2018 to 2020.
“Empowering our students to use written words to highlight our history and culture is so powerful.”—Willard Bill Jr., Cultural Director, Muckleshoot Indian Tribe
Illustrations / 6″ x 9″ / 110 pages / ISBN 978-0-87422-428-3 (2024)
