As a Tlingit and Inupiaq poet in Juneau, Ishmael Hope\u2019s goal for his second book of poetry \u201cRock Piles Along the Eddy\u201d was \u201cto just be himself and to be unapologetically Native.\u201d<\/p>\n
Aak\u2019taatseen, the name of the boy who lived among the salmon people in a Tlingit story, roughly translates to \u2018alive in the eddy,\u2019 Hope said. He came up with the title from listening to Steve Langdon, an anthropologist who teaches at the University of Alaska Anchorage, who spent time talking to Tlingit elders like Walter Soboleff.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s something about an eddy in a river, that has more oxygen and is a little bit colder than the rest of the river \u2026 Langdon spoke in a lecture that humans live in deep relation with other creatures in the world, salmon in this case. Tlingit people knew that (eddies) made for rich grounds when the salmon were making their way upriver, so people would pile rocks on the river to make that eddy and that slight whirlpool nook for salmon.\u201d<\/p>\n
His first book, \u201cCourtesans of Flounder Hill,\u201d published in 2014, took him six years to write. He read book after book and spent a lot of time listening to his elders as he honed his craft. With his first book, he discovered his heart, he said, and while \u201cRock Piles Along the Eddy\u201d continues from where the first left off, the focus shifts to indigenous thought.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe kind of poetry I like, or the direction that I at least start from, is poetry that is really unapologetically of itself, and for me I am a Native man, I\u2019m indigenous, I\u2019m a Tlingit man, I\u2019m Inupiaq,\u201d Hope said. \u201cWithin that, there\u2019s all these areas of exploration. This collection\u2019s starting point is indigenous thought, exploring it, trying to feel it and understand it, even allow its energy to emit from the work.\u201d<\/p>\n
In poems like \u201cIndigenous Thoughts\u201d and \u201cThe Spirit in Everything,\u201d Hope ruminates on this. He takes a contemporary political turn in pieces like \u201cChildren\u2019s Cries\u201d and \u201cCanoe Launching into the Gaslit Sea,\u201d before delving into his home life with \u201cHome Life on Douglas\u201d and \u201cCarrying Louis at Bedtime.\u201d<\/p>\n
A lot of his poetry, Hope said, is his attempt to reach out to other people and the rest of the natural world. He challenges Western ways of thought with the indigenous perspective like \u2018there\u2019s a spirit in everything,\u2019 an idea he dedicates an entire poem to. He said he\u2019d like people to give indigenous perspectives as much credence as they do the Western ones. It is his hope they see the subtleties, nuances and even similarities.<\/p>\n
\u201cI want my children to know, my descendants to know that I tried, that I was looking for ways to reach out to people in real genuine ways,\u201d he said. \u201cThat\u2019s where the poetry comes from. A lot of the work that I do is what is the poem that is there and would still be there even if there was no language.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hope\u2019s view is that his poems are something that already exists within the world. He only writes words around that true poem in an attempt to get at the beating heart of it.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m trying to write from the space that everything is alive. The words are alive,\u201d he said, even the language, he hopes. He knows one of his poems are ready to be read by others when he is out walking and the poem feels alive to him and no longer feels like his creation.<\/p>\n
\u201cSometimes, all a poet can do is point and say \u2018Look at that. That\u2019s alive. That\u2019s real,\u2019\u201d Hope said.<\/p>\n
\u201cRock Piles Along the Eddy\u201d will be released on March 21. Hope will do a reading at 7 p.m. on Thursday, April 27 at the Kindred Post with Alaska State Laureate Ernestine Hayes. The book will also be carried at Hearthside Books and Rainy Retreat Books.<\/p>\n
Contact Capital City Weekly staff writer Clara Miller at clara.miller@capweek.com. <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" As a Tlingit and Inupiaq poet in Juneau, Ishmael Hope\u2019s goal for his second book of poetry \u201cRock Piles Along the Eddy\u201d was \u201cto just be himself and to be unapologetically Native.\u201d Aak\u2019taatseen, the name of the boy who lived among the salmon people in a Tlingit story, roughly translates to \u2018alive in the eddy,\u2019 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":429,"featured_media":31401,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":7,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[74],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-31400","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-life","tag-arts-and-culture"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31400","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/429"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31400"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31400\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31401"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31400"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31400"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31400"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=31400"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}