This week on The Write Question, host Lauren Korn speaks with Haudenosaunee poet Kenzie Allen, author of Cloud Missives (Tin House Books), 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.
This conversation was coordinated in partnership with the Headwaters Reading Series for Health and Well-Being, elevating under-represented voices and inspiring learning and conversation on important yet often overlooked health issues, including Native American well-being, mental health, and disability.
This conversation has been edited for time.
About Kenzie:
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.
Mentioned in this episode:
An Oneida Dictionary by Maria Hinton, and a recording of the same in collaboration with Cliff Abbott
Kenzie Allen recommends:
Anil’s Ghost by Michael Ondaatje (Vintage Books)
Star Quilt by Roberta Hill (Holy Cow Press)
Exploding Chippewas by Mark Turcotte (Triquarterly Books)
Postcolonial Love Poem by Natalie Diaz (Graywolf Press)
What Goes On: Selected and New Poems 1995-2009 by Stephen Dunn (W. W. Norton & Company)
Crush by Richard Siken (Yale University Press)
The Last Time I Saw Amelia Earhart by Gabrielle Calvocoressi (Persea Books)
Slow Lightning by Eduardo Corral (Yale University Press)
Overland by Natalie Eilbert (Copper Canyon Press)
Lauren Korn recommends:
Cloud Missives by Kenzie Allen (Tin House Books)
And Then She Fell (Dutton Books) and A Mind Spread Out on the Ground (Melville House Publishing; Penguin Random House Canada)
out takes/ glove box by Maya Jewell Zeller (New American Press)
Infinite Citizen of the Shaking Tent and Letters in a Bruised Cosmos by Liz Howard (McClelland & Stewart, Penguin Random House)
Judas Goat by Gabrielle Bates (Tin House Books)
The Big Melt by Emily Riddle (Nightwood Editions)
Sáanii Dahataal/The Women Are Singing: Poems and Stories by Luci Tapahonso (University of Arizona Press)
I Am a Body of Land and Lunar Tides by Shannon Webb Campbell (Book*hug Press)
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The Write Question team for this episode was Lauren Korn, host, co-producer, and editor; and Chris Moyles, co-producer, editor, and sound engineer. This episode is supported by Fact & Fiction, an independent bookstore located in the heart of downtown Missoula, Montana, providing books for all ages and supporting the literary community in Montana and beyond. More information can be found at factandfictionbooks.com.
The Write Question logo and brand (2022) was designed by Molly Russell. You can see more of her work at iamthemollruss.com and on Instagram @iamthemollruss.
Funding for The Write Question comes from Humanities Montana; members of Montana Public Radio; and from the Greater Montana Foundation—encouraging communication on issues, trends, and values of importance to Montanans.
The Write Question is a production of Montana Public Radio.
