I feel too porous to read, and too empty to write. In bed, I picture my whole body as a sea sponge—foamy and yielding, with big soft holes. I get angry with myself because this is not how a poet should be. A poet is emotional, yes, but rigid, too—they make their mess within a form, which is the only way people can stand them. I don’t know any forms and am drained of my feelings just from being alive. Still, supposedly, I want to be an artist. I eat buttered toast at the coffee table, thinking this over. When a tree is too slow to fruit, scientists invent new trees with quicker apples. This thought makes me scared, and emptier still. Who are the scientists? I wonder. What did a quick apple taste like?
I began writing "The New World" in 2017, the year I moved onto a sand dune in rural California and the reality TV star assumed the presidency. It was also the year I (we) went fully off-earth, and through the disassociation and isolation I witnessed the daily fumblings of my life with curiosity, and took notes. It's a weird, tender record of alienation, loss, nature, and making “art during wartime.”
"I keep returning to Robert Hayden, Muriel Rukeyser, Gwendolyn Brooks, Philip Levine, Pablo Neruda and Derek Walcott. I still love to see how voices interplay. Sometimes I unconsciously pose questions that might wake me in the night. What did Walcott learn from Hayden? I admire the fun between Galway Kinnell and Sharon Olds that emanates beyond Squaw Valley. I am inspired when I see how poets celebrate the heroics of everyday people."
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"The English translation is a reminder of linguistic colonization. English now surrounds both Irish and Ojibwe, but in my translation is not the primary vehicle for interpretation. Providing an English version of the poem ensures it can be read by Ojibwe speakers who may not know Irish and Irish speakers who may not know Ojibwe. It also reflects that this is a poem primarily concerned with the connection between Irish and Ojibwe which is a decolonial act of reclamation."
