New Poetry Book:

The Hide of My Tongue

BLOG: PLANET ALASKA

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Raven's Blanket website is now available

I recently completed the Masters of Fine Arts Program at the University of Alaska Anchorage

http://www.uaa.alaska.edu/cwla/

With Poets in Winter: Online discussion at Alaska 49 Writers.Review: Newpages, Yellow Medicine Review

"While Niatum speaks with a voice that is academic, the poets in this edition convey a tone that is urgent, and perhaps cynical, in its depiction of everyday lives of indigenous people. Take, for instance, the poetry of Vivian Faith Prescott, a fifth generation Alaskan of Sáami descent. Three of her four poems tell of having to learn English at the expense of oral traditions in her native tongue. In “Language Development,” Prescott writes of her daughter’s visits with a speech therapist:

They told me she had trouble saying her THs
and Ls correctly. LLLLLLLLLL–all that air moving
through, spitting her ancestors out from the sides of her mouth.

In “Talk-Like-an American,” Prescott continues her poetic assault, wondering why ESL classrooms are filled with children from her village “who speak with Tlingit accents” but whose first language is English. Finally, in “Tight Tongues and Open Spaces,” Prescott speaks of how the children of her village are shamed and confused:

         Our faces are streaked
         black, because we can’t yet tell

         our elder’s cultural pause –
         from the space where her grief resides."

New and up-coming Publications

"Glaciology" in Catapult to Mars.

Four poems in Yellow Medicine Review.

Two poems published in Drunken Boat.

Two new war poems published in Tidal Echoes, 2011.

Recently nominated for a Pushcart Prize for the poem "Fish On" published in Turtle Quarterly.

White Knuckle Press. Digital Chapbook: SLICK.

Turtle Quarterly: "Fish On."

Dirtcakes. Two poems: "Story Hunger and "Feed this Raven."

 Flash Fiction: "The Man Who Married a Tree" appearing online at Weird Year, August 1st.

Off the Coast Magazine: "Eternal Return," (poem).

Tidal Echoes: Flash fiction: "Salmon Woman"; and two poems: "I was in love with a boy who loved dog-sledding" and "The Last Word."  

 Gutter Eloquence: Poem: "The Real Road to Nowhere."

Cutthroat: A Journal of the Arts: Poem: "Paths of Most Resistance."

 Islands Institute Journal: Connotations: Poetry/Prose poems: "Wrangell," "Sitka," and "Hoonah."

Cirque: Poetry: "Revelations," and "She's the splitting image of..."

 Cold Flashes: Literary Snapshots of Alaska: Flash Fiction: "Escape from Planet Alaska," "A Boat Named Coffin."