Rena Priest

2022 Fellow, Indigenous Nations Poets

Rena Priest is a member of the Lummi Nation. She has been appointed to serve as Washington State Poet Laureate for the term of April 2021-2023. Her debut collection, Patriarchy Blues was published by MoonPath Press and received an American Book Award. She holds an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College.


Photo by: Erika Schultz of The Seattle Times

Publications

Sublime Subliminal

Genre: Poetry

Publisher: Floating Bridge Press

Publication Date: 2018

Sublime Subliminal by Rena Priest is as cerebral as it is playful and as casual as it is serious. Priest’s poems dazzle readers with history, humor, and pop culture, all while seeking the larger truths within.

Whether sampling phrases in German, French, or using the latest slang, Priest is able to move through her poems with a self-assured sonic deftness. Her attention to language creates electric poems but her attention to sound, the momentum she can create, is what causes one to light up in delight. “I’ve already tasted in your kiss, / the pixels of lightning / you keep in your lips,” Priest writes. Yet, it’s us she shocks awake again and again with each page.

Patriarchy Blues

Genre: Poetry

Publisher: Moonpath Press

Publication Date: May 2017

"Rena Priest addresses those who crave 'the meat of beasts with beets and leeks.' And while she insists that 'Nature makes you pay, ' her poems tell us that through a 'wistful song of sighs.' The world is not always comfortable, but her poems never 'lose touch with the fluidity of the spirit.' Patriarchy Blues is an amazing collection."

--James Bertolino, author of Ravenous Bliss: New & Selected Love Poems