Curator of Ephemera at the New Museum for Archaic Media

By Heid E. Erdrich

2017

First Published

3.96

Average Rating

100

Number of Pages

3H03M

Audio Length

Heid E. Erdrich writes from the present into the future where human anxiety lives. Many of her poems engage ekphrasis around the visual work of contemporary artists who, like Erdrich, are Anishinaabe. Poems in this collection also curate unmountable exhibits in not-yet-existent museums devoted to the ephemera of communication and technology. A central trope is the mixtape, an ephemeral form that Erdrich explores in its role of carrying the romantic angst of American couples. These poems recognize how our love of technology and how the extraction industries on indigenous lands that technology requires threaten our future and obscure the realities of indigenous peoples who know what it is to survive apocalypse. Deeply eco-poetic poems extend beyond the page in poemeos, collaboratively made poem films accessible in the text through the new but already archaic use of QR codes. Collaborative poems highlighting lessons in Anishinaabemowin also broaden the context of Erdrich’s work. Despite how little communications technology has helped to bring people toward understanding one another, these poems speak to the keen human yearning to connect as they urge engagement of the image, the moment, the sensual, and the real.

Avg Rating

3.96

Number of Ratings

5 STARS

32%

4 STARS

41%

3 STARS

20%

2 STARS

1 STARS

goodreads

Author

Heid E. Erdrich

Author · 8 books

Heid E. Erdrich writes and publishes poetry and non-fiction. Her NEW book of poems, Cell Traffic, a new and selected from University of Arizona Press, IS NOW AVAILABLE. Please consider buying it from www.birchbarkbooks.com Heid's most recent book of poems, National Monuments from Michigan State University Press, won the 2009 Minnesota Book Award. Heid Erdrich teaches writing workshops, often as a guest at various colleges and universities. Each year she leads the Turtle Mountain Writers Workshop on her home reservation in North Dakota. Heid also works with American Indian visual artists as a curator and arts advocate. Author of the play "Curiosities," she collaborates broadly on multi-discilinary performances of other artists as well. Founder of Wiigwaas Press, along with her sister Louise Erdrich and poet James Cihlar, Heid continues to publish Ojibwe language books in an effort to assist in indigenous language revitalization work.