Description
Poetry. DEER TRAILS is a strongly elegiac evocation of a San Francisco that lies buried under its contemporary urban landscape, but can still be found peeking through. Native American and native San Franciscan Kim Shuck is the city's seventh poet laureate, and in these poems she celebrates the enduring presence of indigenous San Francisco as a form of resistance to gentrification, urbanization, and the erasure of memory.
"Kim Shuck's serpentine lyrics sing the streets, hills, trees, fog, and rain of San Francisco, as well as the city's deeper cartography of watersheds, village sites, shellmounds, trade paths, and deer trails. As you navigate this book, listen closely: the poems transform into maps, prayers, and medicine that offer healing, wonderment, and joy in our difficult times. 'Travel grateful,' the poet lovingly advises. 'Travel safe.'"—Craig Santos Perez
"Shuck's poetry reminds us that you can believe in the blue note; our elders' speeches that we dance near. Her poems seamlessly walk the aggregates of human presence and voice all of nature's directions. Shuck reminds us of the omniscience of the people in this dictatorship of dimes; the omniscience of the people in all sketches about genocide. Hers is the only way to look at San Francisco. A prayer in the mind of a warrior."—Tongo Eisen-Martin
Author Bio
Kim Shuck is an Ani Yun Wiya (Cherokee)/Polish-American poet, author, weaver, and bead-work artist who draws from Southeastern Native American culture and tradition as well as contemporary urban Indian life. She was born in San Francisco, California, and belongs to the Northern California Cherokee diaspora. She is a member of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma. She earned a BA in Art (1994), and an MFA in Textiles (1998) from San Francisco State University. Her basket weaving work is influenced by her grandmother Etta Mae Rowe and the long history of California Native American basket making. She is the winner of the Diane Decorah First Book Award from the Native Writers' Circle of the Americas and the Mary Tallmountain Award for Freedom Voices. She is also one of 13 recipients of the Academy of American Poets inaugural Poets Laureate Fellowships. Her books include DEER TRAILS (City Lights Publishers, 2019), CLOUDS RUNNING IN (Taurean Horn Press, 2014), RABBIT STORIES (Poetic Matrix Press, 2013), and SMUGGLING CHEROKEE (The Greenfield Review Press, 2006), winner of the Diane Decorah award from the Native Writer's Circle of the Americas in 2005.
Author City: SAN FRANCISCO, CA USA