Joan Naviyuk Kane

Joan Naviyuk Kane is a contemporary Inupiaq American poet. In 2014, Kane was the Indigenous Writer-in-Residence at the School for Advanced Research. She was also a judge for the 2017 Griffin Poetry Prize. Kane was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2018. Kane has family from King Island and Mary's Igloo, Alaska. She graduated from Harvard College with a BA and earned an M.F.A from Columbia University.

Joan Naviyuk Kane

Quotes

"Iridin" from Milk Black Carbon (2017)

Iris versicolor, larger blue flag, a source of the compound iridin

Silene acaulis, moss campion, of the high arctic, tundra & mountains of Eurasia + North America

Hedysarum alpinum, alpine sweet vetch or masu, a plant used in Inuit cuisine

A coastline, a transitional place

bears evidence of others dwelling:

a house pit in the shape of a nest,

another like a knife, a noose

not lost not in time. Ours

a useful relationship though not a tight one,

for between us we knew there was something to lose.

Fragrant in June heat & a field of confusion

nothing like metaphor: moss campion,

minute orchids, sweet

sweet vetch.

"At Bay" from Milk Black Carbon (2017)

Hooper Bay, Alaska

Egegik bay on the Alaska Peninsula

Snow damaged wooden dock, Nome, Alaska, January 1907

A metal roof thrashes in ceaseless gusts—

day is done, punctured. The stones

placed over the closed folds

of her eyes grow cold. The sea

a long line blurred forever

in the distance. Somewhere

snow falls on something illicit,

raising it into beauty:

a bramble of fresh hurt, its leaves

revived and green and again

incandescent with pollen.

Had she been able to step from the boat,

had she unloaded the small coffin—

had he received gifts at dawn,

hand-painted, mythical—

you'd funnel into this illusion,

your breath into the bellows.

Published Works

Poetry Books

• "Insomnia at North", AGNI, 3/2006
• Due North, Columbia University, 2006
• Cormorant Hunter’s Wife, NorthShore Press, 2009, ISBN 9780979436529; University of Alaska Press, 2012, ISBN 9781602231573
• Hyperboreal. University of Pittsburgh Press. 21 October 2013. ISBN 978-0-8229-7914-2. 
• Milk Black Carbon. University of Pittsburgh Press. 2017. ISBN 978-0-8229-6451-3. 
• The Straits. Voices from the American Land, 2015. V.4, Issue 2
• A Few Lines in the Manifest. Albion Books. 14 May 2018.
• Sublingual. Finishing Line Press. 2 November 2018. ISBN 978-163534769-2
• Another Bright Departure. CutBank Books. March 2019. ISBN 978-1-9397-1730-6.
• Dark Traffic. University of Pittsburgh Press. 2021. ISBN 978-0-8229-6662-3

Play Script

• The Gilded Tusk, won the Anchorage Museum script contest

In Anthology

• Best American Poetry, Simon & Schuster, 2015.
• Monticello in Mind, University of Virginia Press, 2016. ISBN 978-0813938509
• Read America(s). Locked Horns Press, 2016. ISBN 978-0990359920
• Syncretism and Survival, Forums on Poetics. Locked Horns Press, 2017. ISBN 978-0990359937
• Ghost Fishing: An Eco-Justice Poetry Anthology. University of Georgia Press, 2018.ISBN 9780820353159
• The Poem's Country: Place and Poetic Practice. 2018. Pleiades Press. ISBN 978-0-9970994-1-6

Quotes about Joan Naviyuk Kane and her works

"Joan Naviyuk Kane's fourth poetry collection, "Milk Black Carbon," is just out in the distinguished series issued by the University of Pittsburgh Press. An Inupiaq with family from King Island and Mary's Igloo, Kane lives in Anchorage. She has received numerous awards for her writing, including the prestigious Whiting Award, the Donald Hall Prize and fellowships from the Rasmuson Foundation. According to Kane, her poems "transfer between self-portraiture and imaged representations of how difficult it is to repatriate oneself to an irrevocably changed homeland …"

"Milk Black Carbon" begins with a poem entitled "Iridin," a word that I had to look up. It's a chemical derived from certain flowers and is used as a purgative. It can also be poisonous. The poem unfolds as a graceful observation: "A coastline, a transitional place/bears evidence of others dwelling …" Presumably this is the former homeland Kane is trying to reconnect with.

Fragrant in June heat & a field of confusion

nothing like metaphor: moss campion,

minute orchids

The title, then, is not just a metaphor, but an actual presence in the flowers observed in the scene. But iridin's medicinal use and its potential danger also suggest that the attempted return to a past way of life carries both rewards and dangers. This is a theme that runs through the book."

― Collection from Alaskan Joan Kane a satisfying journey for lyric poetry fans by John Morgan, 2017 March 19 in the Anchorage Daily News

more moss campion, with snow

External links

• Author's Website
• Profile at The Whiting Foundation
• The Cormorant Hunters Wife website
• Dana Jennings (November 14, 2013). "Poems Against Loss: Joan Naviyuk Kane Talks About 'Hyperboreal'". The New York Times. 
• NPR Staff (June 21, 2013). "Ghost Island Looms Large Among Displaced Inupiat Eskimos". NPR.