Through a Red Place By Rebecca Pelky; Perugia Press
Perugia Press of Florence, founded in 1997 to bring more attention to female writers, has had a unique mission for nearly a quarter of a century: publishing the work of one new female poet each year, following a contest that can attract more than 500 applicants from across the country.
This year’s winner is Rebecca Pelky, a member of the Brothertown Indian Nation of Wisconsin, whose new collection, “Through a Red Place,” is a powerful exploration of the Native American experience, of personal and national history, and of the complex issue of heritage.
Pelky, who was born in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and now teaches film studies at Clarkson University in upstate New York, uses a range of forms in her work: free verse, prose poems, short poems that read almost like haiku, with some written in Mohegan (with English translations).
“Through a Red Place” also includes photographs, old news clippings, Indian school records and other graphics that bear witness to her efforts to trace her roots and to the more general struggles of Native peoples. As publisher’s notes put it, the book is “an inventive collage of geography, history, myth, translation, lineage, erasure, journalism, and photography.”
Some of Pelky’s poems are intensely personal. In “Landmines,” she tries to recall her father, a Vietnam veteran who later struggled with addiction and whose “black eyes never rested.” Searching for information on the man through “musty archives and computer screens,” the poet’s memories still prompt old fears, and she decides to abandon her hunt for information.
“Some stories belong underground, / unfound. Landmines seethe / like yellowjacket nests. Everyone knows / it’s best to leave them alone.”
“Parrish,” by contrast, takes a hard look at how Native children — girls in particular — in the U.S. and Canada were for decades taken from their homes to attend white schools or live with white families in a push to “civilize” them and force them to abandon their language and culture.
“Men arranged this / with other men, / sent Indian girls away / to learn good godly ways. // And the women learned / things they already knew: / how to clean, how to cook, / how to serve. For their teachers / were devout and only wanted / to save the Indians.”
Pelky also writes of her search for her roots and for ancestral land and markers, such as Indian earthen mounds and old graveyards. Many of these markers have been cut off by fences or roads, or plowed over to make way for housing or other construction, such as one mound that now “wears a street like a loincloth, / and has a house pressed into his chest.”
The poet writes feelingly as well about her connection to the earth itself, to forests and streams and fields, especially in Wisconsin. But there are always reminders that this land once belonged to Native peoples, many of whom were forced from their homelands by the relentless push of white settlement.
There’s no more vivid reminder of that than “Between the Lies,” a work Pelky created by eliminating most of the text from a message President Andrew Jackson sent to Congress in 1830, calling for moving Native Americans from the Southern states to land west of the Mississippi River, ostensibly for their good as well as the good of whites.
Against a mostly dark background, like a heavily redacted document, Pelky lets stand just enough words from Jackson’s message to make the meaning of the removal policy clear. One lengthy section of text is reduced to “It will relieve / the Indians / of / power / happiness / progress / lessening their numbers and, / cause / their / certain and / complete execution.”
Pelky’s website is rebeccapelky.com. A virtual book launch for “Through a Red Place” is scheduled for Wednesday, Nov. 4 at 7 p.m. You can find the link by going to perugiapress.org and clicking on “Events.”
Steve Pfarrer can be reached at spfarrer@gazettenet.com.