Poukahangatus: Poems

About this book

The American debut of an acclaimed young poet as she explores her identity as a twenty-first-century Indigenous woman. Poem by poem Tibble carves out a bold new way of engaging history of straddling modernity and ancestry desire and exploitation. Intimate moving virtuosic and hilarious Tayi Tibble is one of the most exciting new voices in poetry today. In Pokahangatus (pronounced Pocahontas) her debut volume Tibble challenges a dazzling array of mythologiesGreek Mori feminist kiwipeeling them apart respinning them in modern terms. Her poems move from rhythmic discussions of the Kardashians sugar daddies and Twilight to exquisite renderings of the natural world and precise emotions (The lump in her throat swelled like a sea that threatened to take him from her and she had to swallow hard). Tibble is also a master narrator of teenage womanhood its exhilarating highs and devastating lows; her high-camp aesthetics correlate to the overflowing beauty irony and ruination of her surroundings. These are warm provocative and profoundly original poems written by a woman for whom diving into the wreck means taking on new assumptionsnamely that it is not radical to write from a world in which the effects of colonization land work and gender are obviously connected. Along the way Tibble scrutinizes perception and how she as a Mori woman fits into trends stereotypes and popular culture. With language that is at once colorful passionate and laugh-out-loud funny Pokahangatus is the work of one of our most daring new poets.