11:30am Panel Discussion: Chris Hoshnic, Elise Paschen, Kimberly Blaeser
Translational Migrations: Indigenous Languages and Bilingual Poetics

This panel explores the possibilities of translation in Indigenous languages and the creative potential of bilingualism in poetry. We approach translation as a migratory act, one that reveals tensions, ruptures, and resonances between languages. Through poetry and dialogue, we examine how linguistic interplay can foreground fragmentation, resistance, and hybridity. These intersections offer new modes of expression that honor Indigenous epistemologies while simultaneously interrogating colonial legacies.

1:00pm Panel Discussion: Joan Naviyuk Kane, Bonney Hartley, Desiree Dallagiacomo

Community and Visibility: Asserting Tribal Sovereignty through Literature, Poetry and Art
How do we define Indigenous poetics outside the frameworks imposed by Western literary traditions? How can literature, poetry, and visual art serve as tools of resistance, healing, and sovereignty? How can we support Indigenous poetry for greater visibility and connection across geographical spaces? And how can we foster both critical thinking and creative responsibility to ensure visibility for all Native writers?

This panel explores the power of Indigenous artistic expression as a method of reclaiming narrative, asserting tribal sovereignty, and building sustainable, community-driven platforms for visibility and support. We will consider how Indigenous poetics, rooted in land, language, and lived experience, resist colonial boundaries and offer expansive possibilities for cultural survival and transformation.

2:30pm Panel Discussion: dg nanouk okpik, Nicole Wallace, m.s. Redcherries
Experimental Poetry Practices in Indigenous Poetry

Poetry has long served as a powerful tool for resistance and reclamation. This panel invites an exploration of how experimental poetic forms, whether through hybridity, genre-bending, or documentary practices, can be used to challenge and dismantle colonial narratives. We will explore work that engages with cross-genre innovation, multilingualism, archival interventions, and other strategies that disrupt dominant histories. How might poetic form itself become a site of refusal, recovery, or reinvention?

4:00pm Panel Discussion: Lou Cornum, Rob Arnold, Tacey Atsitty
Reclamation, Empowerment, Repair
Poetry has long served as a powerful tool for resistance and reclamation. This panel invites an exploration of how experimental poetic forms, whether through hybridity, genre-bending, or documentary practices, can be used to challenge and dismantle colonial narratives. We will explore work that engages with cross-genre innovation, multilingualism, archival interventions, and other strategies that disrupt dominant histories. How might poetic form itself become a site of refusal, recovery, or reinvention?

7:00pm Night 2 Reading: Tacey Atsitty, Heid Erdrich, Joan Naviyuk Kane, Elise Paschen, Nicole Wallace, hosted by María Elisa Schmidt

By attending or participating in this program, you agree to abide by our Community Agreement. Events at Poets House are popular, and this event is first-come, first-served. This program will include sitting and standing room for attendees, and we will have several seats reserved for people with access needs. Sound amplification will be provided.

About the Night Two Readers:

Dr. Tacey M. Atsitty, Diné (Navajo), is Tsénahabiłnii (Sleep Rock People) and born for Ta’neeszahnii (Tangle People). Atsitty is a recipient of the Wisconsin Brittingham Prize for Poetry and other prizes. She holds bachelor’s degrees from Brigham Young University and the Institute of American Indian Arts, and an MFA in Creative Writing from Cornell University. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in POETRY; EPOCH; Kenyon Review Online; Prairie Schooner; When the Light of the World Was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through: A Norton Anthology of Native Nations Poetry; Leavings, and other publications. Her first book is Rain Scald (University of New Mexico Press, 2018), and her second book is (At) Wrist (University of Wisconsin Press, 2023). She is a member of the Advisory Council for BYU’s Charles Redd Center for Western Studies and a board member for Lightscatter Press. She has a PhD in Creative Writing from Florida State University and is Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Beloit College in Wisconsin, where she lives with her husband.

Lou Cornum is a diasporic Diné writer, editor, and academic born in Arizona and based in New York City. Their work traverses Native American Studies, science fiction, cultural studies, and gay communism. They are currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Social and Cultural Analysis at NYU and part of Pinko magazine.

Joan Naviyuk Kane’s books of poetry include The Cormorant Hunter’s Wife (2009), Hyperboreal (2013),  Milk Black Carbon (2017), Dark Traffic (2021), and with snow pouring southward past the window(forthcoming in 2026) in addition to the chapbooks The Straits (2015), Sublingual (2018), A Few Lines in the Manifest (2018), Another Bright Departure (2019), Ex Machina (2023) and & all the ones who chose to leave her (forthcoming in 2028). Her edited volumes include the 2017 Griffin Poetry Prize Anthology(House of Anansi Press), Circumpolar Connections: Creative Indigenous Geographies of the Arctic(Wesleyan University Press), and the forthcoming Colonialism and the Environments: Past, Presents, Futures (Heidelberg University Press). A Guggenheim Fellow, Radcliffe Fellow, Native Arts and Cultures Foundation National Artist Fellow, and Whiting Award and Paul Engle Prize recipient, she’s a 2025 United States Artists Fellow raising her children in Oregon, where she’s an Associate Professor at Reed College.

Elise Paschen, an enrolled member of the Osage Nation, is the author of Blood Wolf Moon, Tallchief, The Nightlife, Bestiary, Infidelities (winner of the Nicholas Roerich Poetry Prize), and Houses: Coasts. As an undergraduate at Harvard, she received the Garrison Medal for poetry. She holds M.Phil. and D.Phil. degrees from Oxford University. Her poems have been published widely, including Poetry Magazine, The New Yorker, A Norton Anthology of Native Nations Poetry and The Best American Poetry. She has edited or co-edited numerous anthologies, including The Eloquent Poem and The New York Times best-seller, Poetry Speaks. A co-founder of Poetry in Motion, Dr. Paschen teaches in the MFA Writing Program at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Nicole Wallace’s first chapbook, WAASAMOWIN, was published by IMP in 2019. Most recently, Nicole was the June/July 2020 poetry micro-resident at Running Dog and a 2019 Poets House Emerging Poets Fellow. Recent work can be read in print in Survivance: Indigenous Poesis Vol. IV Zine and online at Running Dog, A Perfect Vacuum, and LitHub. They have also contributed to programs and publications celebrating the work and life of the late poet, Diane Burns, author of Riding the One-Eyed Ford (Contact II, 1981).

6:00pm Welcome Reception
7:00pm James Welch Prize Reading: Chris Hoshnic, Desireé Bewley Dallagiacomo, dg nanouk okpik. Hosted by Keetje Kuipers
8:00pm Night 1 Reading: Kimberly Blaeser, Bonney Hartley, m.s. RedCherries. Hosted by Rob Arnold

By attending or participating in this program, you agree to abide by our Community Agreement. Events at Poets House are popular, and this event is first-come, first-served. This program will include sitting and standing room for attendees, and we will have several seats reserved for people with access needs. Sound amplification will be provided.

About the James Welch Prize Readers:

Chris Hoshnic is a Navajo poet, playwright, and filmmaker, honored with the 2023 Indigenous Poets Prize for Hayden’s Ferry Review and the Poetry Northwest 2025 James Welch Prize. His fellowships include the Native American Media Alliance’s Writers Seminar, UC-Berkeley Arts Research Center, and the Diné Artisan and Authors Capacity Building Institute, with support from Indigenous Nations Poets, Playwrights Realm, Tin House, and others. He currently directs Diné Kids Film Club, a career readiness project for young Indigenous people in the arts.

Desireé Bewley Dallagiacomo is a citizen of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma. She is a poet and memoirist raised in the foothills of Northern California and the swamplands of Southeast Louisiana. She is the recipient of the 2025 James Welch Prize for Indigenous Poetry, and she has received fellowships from Vermont Studio Center, The Harpo Foundation, Tin House Writing Workshop, and the Helen Zell Writers’ Program, among others. Desireé received her BA in Feminist Studies and a certificate from the Visualizing Abolition Studies program from the University of California, Santa Cruz and she is a poetry candidate in the Helen Zell Writers’ Program at the University of Michigan. She is writing about indigeneity, class, surveillance, and the carceral state.  She is the founder of The Heart of It Writing Retreat & Residencies, and with a team of writers and organizers, she is procuring seed funding to steward land and creative space to house no-cost and low-cost retreats alongside other co-op creative projects. Her first full-length collection of poetry, Sink, was published by Button Poetry.

dg nanouk okpik is Inupiaq, Inuit from Alaska. okpik is the author of Blood Snow (Wave Books, 2022), a finalist for the 2023 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry, and Corpse Whale (University of Arizona Press, 2012), which won the American Book Award and the May Sarton Award. okpik was also the recipient of the Truman Capote Literary Trust Scholarship.

About the Night One Readers:

Kimberly Blaeser, founding director of Indigenous Nations Poets and past Wisconsin Poet Laureate, is the author of works in several genres. Her six poetry collections include Ancient Light (2024), Résister en dansant/Ikwe-niimi: Dancing Resistance (2020), and Copper Yearning (2019).

Bonney Hartley (Munsee/Mohican) holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Institute of American Indian Arts. She is a 2024 and 2025 Indigenous Nations Poets Fellow and a 2025 Forge Project Fellow. Her work has appeared in Stonecoast Review, The Last Milkweed (Tupelo Press), and Boundless (Amherst College Press), among others. She is a member of the Stockbridge-Munsee Community and founding member of Mohican Writers Circle.

m.s. RedCherries received an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and a JD from Arizona State University College of Law. She is a citizen of the Northern Cheyenne Nation. Her debut, mother (Penguin Books) was a finalist for the National Book Award.

Night two of Indigenous Nations Poets fellows readings following our week-long retreat in New York City with an evening of poetry readings from fellows, faculty, and visiting writers. Hosted by Poetry Project Executive Director Nicole Wallace.

Presenting Fellows include:
Noelani Piters, Megane Dorame, Lokosh (Joshua D. Hinson), Owen Oliver, Boderra Joe, m.s. RedCherries, Zadok, Kalilinoe Detwiler, Bonney Hartley, and Anangookwe Wolf

Presenting Faculty & visiting writers include:
Rob Arnold, Kimberly Blaeser, Jake Skeets, No’u Revilla, and Heid E. Erdrich

Presented in partnership with In-Na-Po, Poets House, and MoMA.

This year’s Indigenous Nations Poets fellows cap off their week-long retreat in New York City with an evening of poetry readings from fellows, faculty, and visiting writers. Hosted by Poets House Executive Director Rob Arnold.

Presenting Fellows include:
Donavan Kamakani Albano, Mary Leauna Christensen, Max Early, Shannel Garcia, Ibe Liebenberg, Arielle Taitano Lowe, Kateri Menominee, Sarah-Joy Milner, and Tyler Mitchell  

Presenting Faculty & visiting writers include:
Elise Paschen, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, Nicole Wallace, and Annie Wenstrup

Presented in partnership with In-Na-Po, the Poetry Project, and MoMA.

MoMA welcomes Indigenous Nations Poets (In-Na-Po), a collective committed to mentoring emerging writers, nurturing the growth of Indigenous poetic practices, and raising the visibility of all Native writers past, present, and future. In-Na-Po’s work recognizes the role of poetry in sustaining tribal sovereign nations and Native languages.

Poets Luci Tapahonso (Diné) and Annie Wenstrup (Dena’ina) join filmmaker and poet Sky Hopinka (Ho-Chunk Nation/Pechanga Band of Luiseño Indians) to share creative work and explore ways spirit lines inspire or weave through their practice. The conversation will be moderated by poet and Indigenous Nations Poets founding director Dr. Kimberly Blaeser (Anishinaabe).

This event is part of the 2025 Indigenous Nations Poets’ mentoring retreat, which brings together younger poetic voices with poet mentors. This year’s retreat theme, Spirit Lines and Visual Poetics, considers the many ways Indigenous poetics allude to and embody spiritual knowledge and traditions, and the visual experimentations poets employ to break the bounds of text.

Free, registration or RSVP required

Join the poet laureate of the Navajo Nation Jake Skeets, Center Circl, and In-Na-Po for our 2025 keynote!

This event is part of the 2025 Indigenous Nations Poets mentoring retreat. This year’s retreat theme, Spirit Lines and Visual Poetics, considers the many ways Indigenous poetics allude to and embody spiritual knowledge and traditions, and the visual experimentations poets employ to break the bounds of text.

Jake Skeets is the author of Eyes Bottle Dark with a Mouthful of Flowers, winner of the National Poetry Series, American Book Award, Kate Tufts Discovery Award, and Whiting Award. His work has appeared in journals and magazines such as Poetry, The New York Times Magazine, and The Paris Review. Other honors include an NEA Grant for Arts Projects, a Mellon Projecting All Voices Fellowship, and the 2023-2024 Grisham Writer in Residence at the University of Mississippi.  He is from the Navajo Nation and teaches at the University of Oklahoma.

Founded in 2020, In-Na-Po—Indigenous Nations Poets—is a national Indigenous poetry community committed to mentoring emerging writers, nurturing the growth of Indigenous poetic practices, and raising the visibility of all Native Writers past, present, and future. In-Na-Po recognizes the role of poetry in sustaining tribal sovereign nations and Native languages.

Join the Minnesota Humanities Center for an engaging and interactive online poetry craft talk and workshop! Featuring her most recent collection, “Verb Animate,” this workshop will be led by esteemed writer and the first poet laureate of the City of Minneapolis, Heid E. Erdrich.

In this session, participants will dip into creative activities using poems and prompts from “Verb Animate.” Heid will also read poems from this collection and share more about its creation; each poem included arose from a collaborative act with another poet or artist. Whether you are a seasoned poet or just beginning, don’t miss this opportunity to write and learn more about community centered, collaborative poetry.

On Tuesday, April 15, we’ll be at the Tulsa Historical Society & Museum to celebrate the release of Elise Paschen’s newest poetry collection BLOOD WOLF MOON, an exploration of her identity and Osage roots. This free event will start at 7pm and is open to all!

Celebrate Elise Paschen’s book release for Blood Wolf Moon and Poetry guest editor Esther Belin’s special March issue on Diné Poetics. Osage artists June Carpenter and Lydia Cheshewalla will also give artist talks.The presentation will be followed by a reception. 

POWER LINES FROM THE POETS:

“ 𐓧𐓪 ̄ 𐓡𐓪 ̋ 𐓱𐓘 lǫǫhóohtą We thunder

𐓡𐓣 ̋ híi while our teeth

𐓣́𐓟 íe talk.”

—Elise Paschen, 𐓷𐓘𐓧𐓟́𐓺𐓟/Waléze/Stationery

Kimberly Blaeser Reading with Elise Pachen & Kenzie Allen

Center for Indigenous Futures,
56 W Adams St,
Chicago, IL

IN PERSON: KINSALE DRAKE BOOK LAUNCH WITH HEID E. ERDRICH

Please join us as we welcome debut poet KINSALEDRAKE to Milkweed Books to read from her collection The Sky Was Once a Dark Blanket. She will be joined by Minneapolis Poet Laureate HEID E. ERDRICH. 

ABOUT THE BOOK

The Sky Was Once a Dark Blanket traverses the Southwest landscape, exploring intricate relationships between Native peoples and the natural world, land, pop culture, twentieth-century music, and multi-generational representations. Oscillating between musical influences, including the repercussions of ethno-musicology, and the present/past/future, the collection rewrites and re-rights what it means to be Indigenous, queer, and even formerly-emo in the…