“It was perhaps also unsurprising that alongside the contemporary presencing of our Indigenous selves, many of the visual poems dealt with resistance to various forms of colonialism: colonial oppression, colonial hauntings, capitalism, extraction, erasure, and climate catastrophes.” — Marama Salsano and Lara Felsing, editors
To Feel The Earth as One’s Skin is the first of its kind in the UK and covers global issues such as ecological degradation, social injustice and racial disparities, which are issues that, impact people across the globe. The pages within examine the decoloniality of imagination as an escape, a tuning back to some of the precolonial frequencies that have been disrupted or redefined due to the colonial and violent spaces that can encompass current ways of thinking and knowledge. Amongst other things, To Feel The Earth as One’s Skin highlights the importance for non-Indigenous artists/poets/publishers in making appropriate connections with Indigenous creatives.
The anthology features Indigenous poets of Māori, Cree, Nakota, Mestiza, Otipemisiwak, Dene, Apache, Yoeme, Kalinga, Kapampangan, Kainai, Kalmyk and Narungga descent, amongst others, which we hope offers a wide scope of the possibilities of Indigenous visual poetry today. The book includes work by Cecilia Vicuña, Lissy and Rudi Robinson-Cole, Gabriella Heron, Kohei Fujito, Ammon Hāwea Apiata, Natalie Harkin, Joely BigEagle-Kequahtooway, Lorne Kequahtooway, MP Pratheesh, Lara Felsing, Valentina Figeuroa, Hollie Tawhiao, Justene Dion-Glowa, Thea Canlas, Bruno Canadien, Marama Salsano, Hana Pera Aoake, Chi Nwosu, Solange Aguilar, Cassandra Barnett, Amber WeaselHead, Hineitimoana Greensill and Chantel Matthews, Sylvia Johnson, Tracey Tawhiao, Mackenzie Ground, Sasha Stiles, Nevada Lynn and Mere Taito.
Praise for To Feel The Earth as One's Skin:
"A collection to dip, wade or flow through; To Feel The Earth as One’s Skin is an argument, a gathering-place, a feast. Each artist who has responded to the editors’ call for visual poetry demonstrates the inextricability of the written word from other kinds of arts. More than this, in a dizzying and generative range of textual practices, collectively these artists - and editors - invoke a multi-sited creative world based on expansive networks of relation. Refreshing and assertive, this anthology invites us to linger, to trace, to be nourished, and to radically reconsider".
—Prof. Alice Te Punga Somerville, University of British Columbia
"To Feel The Earth as One’s Skin is at once a continuation of a long history of Indigenous storytelling, artistry and creativity, and a harbinger of the potential for Indigenous and non-Indigenous collaboration. This collection is made up of distinct individual voices from nations including that of Ainu, Cree, Māori and Métis, that together form a literary and visual tapestry of Indigenous resilience and resistance to environmental degradation and colonialism. To Feel The Earth as One’s Skin, though born out of this contemporary moment, illustrates ancestral knowledge to envisage an equitable future".
—Dr. Emma Barnes, Univeristy of Salford
To Feel The Earth as One's Skin: An anthology of Indigenous visual poetry
First edition of 200
148 x 210 mm
104 printed colour pages
ISBN: 978-1-8383206-7-6
Launch: TBC
Poem Atlas (London)
Lara Felsing a Métis interdisciplinary artist, writer and mother from Alberta, Canada. She has an MFA from the Emily Carr University of Art & Design in Vancouver, British Columbia. Her practice explores kinship to the natural world and advocates for the necessity of living in reciprocity with the land and all living beings. Traditional plant harvesting is at the core of her practice.
Marama Salsano (Ngāi Tūhoe, Te Aitanga-a-Māhaki, Ngāti Porou, Ngāti Wairere) is a māmā, writer, and multidisciplinary artist. Marama has an MA in Tikanga Māori from Waikato University, and an MA in creative writing from the International Institute of Modern Letters at Victoria University in Wellington, where she is also a PhD candidate. Her critical-creative contributions are published in various anthologies and journals.
Astra Papachristodoulou is a poet and curator from Rhodes, Greece. Her doctoral project at the University of Surrey, UK, explored sculptural poetics as a revolutionary act in the context of the Anthropocene. Her work is often about ecological degradation and social injustice. Astra is the author of several poetry books including Constellations, Stargazing and Selected Variations for Bees (all published by Guillemot Press).