The Wordy Fox

on being yourself

WOMEN’S HISTORY MONTH: fossil records, ravens, and layering with dg nanouk okpik

This week we feature Alaskan poet dg nanouk okpik (b. 1966). Born in Anchorage, okpik is Inupiaq, Inuit, though she was raised by a white adoptive family. She’s taught at the Institute of American Indian Arts and served as resident advisor for the Santa Fe Indian School. Her most recent collection blood snow was a finalist for the 2023 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry. The poems featured here are drawn from her first collection, corpse whale, published in 2012 by University of Arizona Press as part of the Sun Tracks series. Sun Tracks was established in Tuscon in 1971 to highlight the creative work – writing as well as visual arts – of Native Americans. corpse whale won an American Book Award and the May Stanton Award.

In his foreword to corpse whale, Arthur Sze highlights the layering of time in okpik’s poems, and suggests a “visionary quest” for some eternal element at the core of the work: “Past, future, and present co-exist, and this underlying conception of time strengthens the mythical elements in her work.”

Speaking with Southeast Review after the release of blood snow, okpik explains Sze’s profound influence on her own work – she studied with him at the Institute of American Indian Arts – and the way her poetics is shaped and layered by such influences, as well as her travels: “my diction is a composite of these travels and many stories told. It is comprised of beauty and the agony of man’s struggles. In eight types of symbolism that come naturally to me. I let the writing speak for itself.”

View other posts on Natives American/First Nation Women Writers.

See other Women’s History Month posts.

–Amanda, Special Collections Graduate Intern.

Everything, Mary Oliver

The Breathing, Denise Levertov

A Prayer by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

The Laughing Heart by Charles Bukowski

Like a Small Café, That’s Love by Mahmoud Darwish (translated by Mohammad Shaheen)

Having a Coke with You by Frank O’Hara

Eating Together by Li-Young Lee

The Orange by Wendy Cope

The Quiet Machine, Ada Limón

To Go Mad, Paruyr Sevak

Our Beautiful Life When It’s Filled with Shrieks by Christopher Citro

Hammond B3 Organ Cistern, Gabrielle Calvocoressi

Peace XVIII, Khalil Gibran

Your Unripe Love, Paruyr Sevak (from “Anthology of Armenian poetry")

Here and Now by Peter Balakian

Ich finde dich (I find you) by Rainer Maria Rilke

The Thing Is by Ellen Bass

One Art by Elizabeth Bishop

Miss you. Would like to take a walk with you. by Gabrielle Calvocoressi

I Want to Write Something So Simply by Mary Oliver

What's Not to Love by Brendan Constantine

Where does such tenderness come from? by Marina Tsvetaeva

You Are Tired (I Think) by E. E. Cummings

Living With the News by W.S.Merwin

You're the Top by Ellen Bass

Grand Fugue by Peter E. Murphy

Our Beautiful Life When It's Filled with Shrieks by Christopher Citro

Everything Is Waiting For You by David Whyte

Lawrence Ferlinghetti Is Alive! by Emily Sernaker

Instructions for Assembling the Miracle by Peter Cooley

Catalogue of Unabashed Gratitude by Ross Gay

Barton Springs by Tony Hoagland

Footnote to Howl by Allen Ginsberg

Song of the Open Road by Walt Whitman

Tomorrow, No, Tomorrower by Bradley Trumpfheller

At Last the New Arriving by Gabrielle Calvocoressi

To a Self-Proclaimed Manic Depressive Ex-Stripper Poet, After a Reading by Jeannine Hall Gailey

In the Presence of Absence by Richard Widerkehr

Chillary Clinton Said 'We Have to Bring Them to Heal' by Cortney Lamar Charleston

Midsummer by Charles Simic

Today by Frank O'Hara

Naturally by Stephen Dunn

Life is Slightly Different Than You Think It Is by Arthur Vogelsang

Ode to My Husband, Who Brings the Music by Zeina Hashem Beck

The Imaginal Stage by D.A. Powell

Lucky Life by Gerald Stern

Beginner's Lesson by Malcolm Alexander

Presidential Poetry Briefing by Albert Haley

A Poem for Uncertainties by Mark Terrill

On Coming Home by Lisa Summe

G-9 by Tim Dlugos

Five Haiku by Billy Collins

The Fates by David Kirby

Upon Receiving My Inheritance by William Fargason

Variation on a Theme by W. S. Merwin

Easy as Falling Down Stairs by Dean Young

Psalm 150 by Jericho Brown

Pantoum for Sabbouha by Zeina Hashem Beck

ASMR by Corey Van Landingham

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From Blossoms by Li-Young Lee

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Hammond B3 Organ Cistern by Gabrielle Calvocoressi

Sorrow Is Not My Name by Ross Gay

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Monet Refuses the Operation by Lisel Mueller

The City Limits by A.R. Ammons