Poet Lore and The Writer’s Center presents a FREE virtual chat about the craft of poetry! We’re joined by Kenzie Allen to discuss her debut collection, Cloud Missives. Kenzie is in conversation with Emily Holland, poet and editor of Poet Lore, America’s oldest poetry journal.
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We encourage you to order a copy of the book from your local, independent bookseller or online from Bookshop.org »
Kenzie Allen is a Haudenosaunee poet and multimodal artist. A finalist for the National Poetry Series, her work has appeared in Poetry magazine, Boston Review, Narrative, The Paris Review’s The Daily, Best New Poets, Poets.org, and other venues. Born in West Texas, she now shares time between Toronto, Ontario; Stavanger, Norway; and the Oneida reservation in Green Bay, Wisconsin.
About the Book
“A masterwork.” —Diane Seuss
Each poem examines a mystery. Each poem has its own Indigeneity. Each poem is its own cloud missive.
Intimate, dissecting, and liberating, Cloud Missives is a poetry collection of excavation and renewal. Like an anthropologist, Kenzie Allen reveals a life from what endures after tragedies and acts of survival. Across four sections, poems explore pop culture—the stereotypes in Peter Pan, Indiana Jones, and beyond—fairy tales, myths, protests, and forgotten histories, before arriving at a dazzling series of love poems that deepen our understanding of romantic, platonic, and communal love.
Cloud Missives is an investigation, a manifestation, and a celebration: of the body, of what we make and remake, of the self, and of the heart. With care and deep attention, it asks what one can reimagine of Indigenous personhood in the wake of colonialism, what healing might look like when loving the world around you—and introduces readers to a profound new voice in poetry.
If you need an accommodation for this event, please contact us at access@writer.org. We will attempt to fulfill all requests, but advance notice is necessary to arrange for some accessibility services.