Big queer NDN poetry love (+ new reading guide!)

Over the past few months I've been working with Geneviève François on a reading guide for Speculative Relations, and I'm happy to share that it is now finished and posted on the Duke University Press website.

The reading guide provides concrete ways of engaging with the book, in particular Speculation, Worlding, Repair, and Relationality. Each of these concepts is explored in reference to the book, and Geneviève did an amazing job developing prompts for discussion, engagement, and future work.

One refrain in my writing is the word "enact." I wanted the book to activate, enact, embody, the methods I was developing. The reading guide continues that practice by enacting the book's methods and inviting readers to consider not only how they relate to the text, but how they might activate memories, works of art, histories, and stories, as part of their own artistic or scholarly practice.

I am grateful to Geneviève for the hard work and hope this document allows you, reader, to continue to speculate.

I'm also happy to share that a new review of Speculative Relations has come out in caa.reviews, by Clementine Bordeaux. One line that stuck out to me from the review is this: "The ultimate repair of the text is that, as a tribal member and American Indian Studies reader, I did not have to slog through the hefty lift of reestablishing the field of Native American and Indigenous Studies." I really appreciate that Bordeaux feels that way. It was very much my intention to refuse to explain what Native studies is, and instead start from the understanding that the field is thriving and needs no justification, just like our own knowledges and methodologies may need support and context, but they do not need to justify their existence.

And finally, I ran into Diné artist Demian DinéYazhi' last week, and jokingly said I was going to create a top 10 list of Indigiqueer poetry for pride month. He made me promise to actually do it.

So, without further ado—and with a big wink to the fact that the last chapter of Speculative Relations is, ahem, dedicated to queer Indigenous poetics—here is my list, in no particular order:

1. Beth Brant (Bay of Quinte Mohawk) – Generous Spirit: Selected Work by Beth Brant, ed. Janice Gould (2019)
2. Lee Maracle (Stó:lō) – I Am Woman (1988)
3. Arielle Twist (Nêhiyaw) – Disintegrate/Dissociate (2019)
4. Jake Skeets (Diné) – Eyes Bottle Dark with a Mouthful of Flowers (2019)
5. Natalie Diaz (Mojave) – Postcolonial Love Poem (2020)
6. Billy-Ray Belcourt (Driftpile Cree Nation) – A History of My Brief Body (2020)
7. Joshua Whitehead (Peguis First Nation/Cree) – Making Love with the Land (2022)
8. Demian DinéYazhi' (Diné) – We Left Them Nothing (2021)
9. Smokii Sumac (Ktunaxa Nation) – You Are Enough: love poems for the end of the world (2018)
10. Tenille K. Campbell (Dene/Métis) – #Indian Love Poems (2017)

I know there are people I'm missing, or new works, like Skeets's Horses (2025) and Belcourt's the idea of an entire life (2025), so please don't hesitate to add to the list, or share what you've been reading.

Big queer NDN poetry love to you all, babes.