Description
Poet Cheryl J. Fish will explore the powerful ecological and indigenous contexts of U.S. Poet Laureate Joy Harjo, a member of the Mvskoke Nation, and Craig Santos Perez, a native Chamoru (Chamorro) from the Pacific Island of Guåhan/Guam. Both poets meld experience, ancestry, and geographical situatedness with references to spiritual and ecological accountability in the face of tragedy. Harjo and Santos-Perez consider the effects of colonization and trauma on their people and the repercussions of toxic chemicals, overdevelopment, and indigenous removal. Through the use of irony, humor, transformation, spirituality, and other-than-human perspectives, they illustrate the ways in which poetry reimagines and guides readers through traditional knowledge. With startling language and poetic magic that enlarges our relationship to plants, animals, and land, these poets have us reconsider assumptions.
About Cheryl J. Fish
Cheryl J. Fish, who has been a Fulbright professor in Finland, published her debut novel, Off the Yoga Mat, in 2022. She is the author of poetry collections including The Sauna is Full of Maids, poems and photographs celebrating Finnish sauna culture, the natural world, and friendships; and Crater & Tower, poems reflecting on trauma and ecology after the Mount St. Helens volcanic eruption and the terrorist attack of 9/11. She is coeditor with Farah Griffin of A Stranger in the Village: Two Centuries of African-American Travel Writing. Fish’s poems have appeared in Hanging Loose, Maintenant, Terrain, Mom Egg Review, New American Writing, Reed, Postcard poems, Volt, Santa Monica Review, About Place Journal, ISLE, and Poetics for the More-than-Human-World. Her short fiction has appeared in Cheap Pop, Iron Horse Literary Review, Liars League, Gargoyle, Mom Egg Review, Spank the Carp, and New Voices: Contemporary Writers Confront the Holocaust. She recently published an interview with novelist Bonnie Jo Campbell in BOMB magazine online. She is a creative writing editor at the Turkish journal Ecocene and professor of English at BMCC/City University of New York. She has taught at University of Helsinki, Hobart Festival of Women Writers and Art in the Basin.
