Feb 2024 – Reclamation Poetry Gathering

A trans-Indigenous conversation, with juxtapositions
that decenter European thought and begin to translate
an oceanic-to-desert-to-river-to-forest poetic imaginary.

Reclamation Poetry Gathering

February 15 – 18, 2024

Led by Facilitators:
Beth Piatote, Arts Research Center and lukupsíimey
Craig Santos Perez, University of Hawai’i at Mānoa
Natalie Diaz, Arizona State University + Center for the Imagination in the Borderlands

RECLAMATION will gather the 19 fellows chosen to participate in the 2023 Poetry & the Senses program:

RECLAMATION will include readings, ekphrastic poetry workshop,
and a group book signing by all published poets.

Hosted at BAMPFA, in coordination with the
Duane Linklater: mymotherside exhibition and retrospective.

Read more about each poet.

Under the theme of Reclamation, the 2023 Spring and Fall terms of Poetry & the Senses are led by Indigenous writers who draw on Indigenous languages and aesthetics: Craig Santos Perez (Chamoru), Natalie Diaz (Mojave), and Beth Piatote (Nez Perce). Berkeley’s poetry fellows will be joined by a team of writers from University of Hawaii (Perez); Arizona State University (Diaz); and the community-based Nez Perce writing collective, luk’upsíimey (Piatote).

UC Berkeley occupies the unceded territory of the Ohlone peoples, and as a land grant university it benefits materially from the historical and ongoing dispossession of Indigenous land. In calendar year 2023, ARC will create dialogues with two other public land-grant universities that also have significant, complex histories with Native territorial dispossession as well as with Indigenous education and outreach. The first is University of Hawai’i at Mānoa in spring 2023, and the second is Arizona State University, in fall 2023. ARC Poetry Fellows from UC Berkeley & the Bay Area will be in conversation with both fellowship cohorts from UH and ASU. In addition, they are collaborating with fellows from the Nez Perce writing group luk’upsíimey, which uses poetry to assist in crucial reclamation and linguistic revitalization. The Nez Perce were exiled and forced to disperse from their homelands in Wallawa, Oregon; language and poetry is one mechanism of their return.

This expansion of our current model will create connections around Indigenous issues across 4+ different western states and will explore poetry and the politics of language in a wider framework. The interest is in creating a trans-Indigenous conversation, with juxtapositions that decenter European thought and begin to translate an oceanic-to-desert-to-river-to-forest poetic imaginary.

This event is presented by the Arts Research Center, generously sponsored by Engaging the Senses Foundation and co-sponsored by the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive.