Visiting Writers Series: Kinsale Drake’s Poetry Ignites
Photo from kinsaledrake.com
On Thursday, November 7, inside the Chapel of Eliot Hall, Diné poet and founder of the NDN Girls Book Club, Kinsale Drake, read and discussed selected poems from her 2023 National Poetry Series winning collection, The Sky Was Once a Dark Blanket, for the most recent installment of the English Department-sponsored Visiting Writers Series. Within the seated congregation, writers and readers alike gathered, ready and awaiting the latest visiting writer. Beginning the event, Joan Naviyuk Kane, Associate Professor of Creative Writing here at Reed, introduced the visiting Kinsale Drake. In the time to follow, Drake, while reading a variety of her poems, interspersed personal commentary and anecdotes pertaining to themes of music, family, and Navajo identity, culture, and heritage, culminating in a discussion that advocates for the importance of Indigenous literary voices in a world that silences them.
Through her readings and commentary, Drake spoke to various aspects of the creative process; writing, workshops, revisions, but first and foremost, one's initial inspiration. The moments of life untethered from internal expectations that what is being experienced must soon be shared to the world by way of the written word. Rather, these are the moments where the ember first meets the kindling, where the ignited flame grows patiently, unnoticed until it has burned from the heart to the hand and the writer is given no choice but to write.
From times when she was young, impressionable, and careless, guided only by the hands of her family, hearing stories from her parents and grandparents, fostering a deep connection to her Diné culture and heritage, Drake vividly described the quintessential elements of a Diné upbringing that nurtured not only her intimate connection with her heritage, but also her desire to tell stories of her life, her culture, and her people, such as the many times she recalled driving through the vast and beautiful landscapes of the American Southwest, the voices of Hank Williams, Loretta Lynn, and Johnny Cash playing through KTNN, the Navajo radio station, calling out to her, transporting her back in time, someway, somehow.
The first poem of the collection, spangled, inspired by Jimi Hendrix’s performance of the Star-Spangled Banner at Woodstock ‘69, leads the reader into the world of Kinsale Drake. “I must sing / our grandparents’ blues / knocked down in the grasses / and thick in the farmhouse. / O, like Jimi’s guitar I must sing–.” She noted that this poem served as a recentering of her canon. Recentering herself, then finding a new way forward, choosing to sing “our song.”
In FOR MILDRED BAILEY, in three parts Drake encapsulates the life of Mildred Bailey, a prominent Native American jazz singer of the first half of the 20th century. Within the poem's second part, Drake interweaves italicized lyrics from Bailey’s Lover, Come Back To Me with her own poetry. “Under the law, she’s not a human being” writes Drake as the ghost of Mildred Bailey sings out, “Lover, come back / Lover, come back to me.” A poem that captures the angelic voice and presence of Mildred Bailey only to juxtapose this beauty with injustice and heartbreak. “Her voice blue smoke, / dead at 44.”
Beyond just these two poems, The Sky Was Once A Dark Blanket is a collection that balances political subject matter, confessional moments, and pop culture references that are only likely to come from a poet born in the 21st century. By just flipping through the pages, one may notice these elements of contemporary pop culture in the rather unique titling of various poems, namely Kylie Jenner Collage of the American West. Or perhaps, after reading a bit deeper, one may find mentions of Instagram and My Chemical Romance in Ancestor’s wildest dreams. While the incorporation of these elements may make the collection indebted to current times, that may exactly be the point. Drake’s voice is one that is representative of the moment. The idiosyncratic elements of her poetry, while forming a distinctive literary voice, also ends up forming a voice outside of the page; a voice that speaks to and for those who find kinship with Drake, whether it be through identity or culture.
At various points while at the podium, Drake mentioned the beauty and freedom that comes with poetry as a form of expression, unbounded from typical linguistic or grammatical constraints, where the poet can utilize the expansive capabilities of printed text. Italics, lowercase, large spaces between words, and free-flowing structure are all literary tools Drake uses in the crafting of her poetry. This idea is epitomized no better than in Navajo-English Dictionary. Even at first glance, without even making an effort to read the text, one can notice how Drake harnesses the freedom and possibilities of poetry, producing a collection that is youthful, experimental, and new.
What does it mean to push the boundaries of poetry, in both style and content? A question that frequently comes to mind for writers like Drake who wish to sing the voices of the unheard. The voices that exist long into the past and continue to exist today, even in spite of their marginalization and forced conformity from others. In BLACKLIST ME, the collection’s final poem, Drake recalls a formative memory wherein the pressure to conform her writing was bearing down on her, especially considering that this pressure came from an English professor, who ideally would’ve helped Drake to form her own individual style. The professor described her poetry as being akin to music, beautifully sounding but with no substance. However, Drake argued that substance doesn’t just come from complacency, the status quo, and repeating what has already been said, but rather that it comes from bitterness, anger, and a desire to confront the injustice of the world through poetry. The collection begins with the idea of recentering her canon—it ends with her creating her own. From the end of after Sacred Water (Our Emergence), “So we tell our stories / Go to the water / Tend this land / & remember.”