Interview with Layli Long Soldier by Rey M. Rodríguez and Oona Uishama Narváez

There are many wonderful reasons to be a student at the Institute of American Arts, but at the top of the list is the chance to be taught by extraordinary writers who change our understanding of the art form we are studying, and in turn, change our understanding of ourselves. Layli Long Soldier is such a teacher.

 Layli Long Soldier holds a B.F.A. from the Institute of American Indian Arts and an M.F.A. from Bard College. Her poems have appeared in POETRY Magazine, The New York Times, The American Poet, The American Reader, The Kenyon Review, BOMB and elsewhere. She is the recipient of an NACF National Artist Fellowship, a Lannan Literary Fellowship, a Whiting Award, and was a finalist for the 2017 National Book Award. She has also received the 2018 PEN/Jean Stein Award, the 2018 National Book Critics Circle Award, a 2021 Academy of Arts and Letters Award for Literature, and the 2021 Michael Murphy Memorial Poetry Prize in the UK. She is the author of Chromosomory (Q Avenue Press, 2010) and WHEREAS (Graywolf Press, 2017). She is a mentor in the MFA Creative Writing Program at the Institute of American Indian Arts and the 2024-25 Endowed Chair at Texas State University. She resides in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

 These are only a few of her accomplishments, and they give a hint as to the impact Long Soldier has on those who have the privilege of being introduced to her through her work, which is profound and stays with readers long after they have first encountered it. Natalie Diaz, reviewing Long Soldier’s Whereas in the New York Times writes,

“Likewise, Long Soldier’s poems are radical in structure and constraint. The white spaces in her poems are not felt as absence but are generative, each as intentionally shaped and as sonic as her text, as with Section 3 from “Ȟe Sápa,” a visual poem in the vein of Nichol and a semantic playground echoing Stein, laid out on the page in a square, with each line representing one side: ‘This is how you see me the space in which to place me / The space in me you see is this place / To see this space see how you place me in you / This is how to place you in the space in which to see.’”

Just as she transforms her readers through inventive interrogations of language and the page, she also alters the lives of her students and their works through her teaching. To make this interview “generative” as Diaz describes, I invited Oona Uishama Narváez, a current student of Long Soldier and a poet studying in IAIA’s MFA Creative Writing program, to ask specific questions about her mentor’s work. We hope after reading this interview you will get a sense of what a masterful teacher Long Soldier is. We also hope that readers will be changed or at least think of poetry differently through the breadth of topics we cover and what our poet has to teach.

RR: Thank you for speaking to us at the Storyteller’s Blog for the Chapter House Literary Journal of the Institute for American Indian Arts. So, let’s get right to it. What is poetry?

That's a big question that's hard to answer. But if you want, I can go there with you. But you're going to have to be ready for a little abstraction, as well.

RR: Yes.

Poetry is not even confined to language. There's a poem I wrote titled, “38,” and there's a line in there.

RR: Apologies for interrupting, but that poem is one of the most popular in Chapter House. It gets so many hits. It is always at the top of the list in terms of interest and engagement.

Thank you for that Rey. So there's a line in the piece where I write about the Dakota 38, and their retribution towards this non-native trader, Andrew Myrick, was to stuff his mouth with grass. That action was a kind of poem. It was a poem that did not require words.

RR: I understand.

And I would add that there is a sense of poetic justice in that moment. I've also talked about this with students in the sense that there are some things in the natural world, for example, that I love so much, and for me, there is no language that can embody its beauty or the wonder that I feel. One of my favorite images, as you know from my book, is grass. It’s a throughline throughout my book, right?

RR: Yes.

But my favorite thing is, when you see a stretch of land with really high grasses, in late spring, early summer, let's say, and you see the wind blow across the grass, and it looks like water.

There's like a silver turning as the wind ripples through it. It is my very favorite thing. No poem in the world can contain that feeling. So to answer your question, perhaps I might say poetry is not contained to the page or language, but we attempt. We make our best attempt, as poets to work with that material of language.

RR: I love this concept of poetic justice. Can you explore this concept more? what do you think poetic justice is? Do you think your work is in and of itself a form of poetic justice by speaking for yourself, and a larger community?

Well, first of all, I understand poetic justice as a thing that exists outside of poetry. So that's why I was using it as an example. It exists outside of the page, right?

RR: Yes.

For example, as I said, what happened with the Dakota 38 and Andrew Myrick's mouth being stuffed with grass? That is not something that happens in between the covers of a book. That is just pure action, event, encounter, human engagement, and relationship. And I think that's the realm where it exists. To witness it is incredible.

RR: But I feel your book in and of itself is poetic justice because the act of writing is an act that documents the action, event, and encounter.

I don't know if it's my place to say one way or the other, but what I will say is that concerning law and poetry they're closely connected in the way that we work with language. One single word can change everything. It can completely alter reasoning and a ruling, right?

As poets, we understand that one word, likewise, can tilt or shift a whole poem. It can open up a realm of surprise and lead a reader to a place they’d not gone to before. Just one word can do that. It can also ruin a whole poem.

And so, in poetry, we are attentive to every line and every word and the multiplicity of meaning within a single word. And in law, language is used to the client's advantage or the government's advantage in some instances, right? I hate to say it, but there is a sinister energy in the way that language is crafted and cobbled together in some of the policy-making or Supreme Court rulings.

I'm saying this from a Native perspective because we are often on the losing end in terms of our tribal nations versus the US Government, especially with land rights and resources. In this context, legal language is weaponized against us. Nonetheless, I must also acknowledge there are times when law and policy have brought about great change. It's not all sinister. Some positive things happened.

RR: It's all a question of power. Who writes the law and who enforces the law?

And so often poetry is the antithesis to the law. Poetry is a form of subversion, right? It is an upending of power.

RR: And with that, I turn it over to Oona to ask questions.

OUN: Thank you, Rey, I’m quite excited for this opportunity and to jump into some more artistic interrogations. Throughout all your work you write in both English and Lakota. What is it like working with English, which is a language that emphasizes a very individualized experience, as opposed to Lakota which has more of a collaborative voice, both through the necessity of oral communication and its distance from a singular “I” speaker?

I gave a lecture on it at IAIA, in the MFA Program, I want to say, maybe a year or two ago, and the way that it's changed through the years, my approach to working with Lakota language and English, and the two languages on the same page.

In my early studies in poetry, I would use the Lakota language in my work because I wanted to be closer to our language. I'm not a fluent speaker. I just know certain words and phrases, and so being able to work with the Lakota language through poetry was a way to think about meanings and also to have fun with our language. In other words, it was an outlet to work with our language in an artistic way and to offer something enjoyable or pleasurable to others. You will see some of my early poems that are primarily written in English, and a few Lakota words or phrases appear here and there throughout the page. As time passed, I started realizing that when I looked at those pages, I recognized the way that those interspersed phrases and words in Lakota were surrounded by a sea of English—nearly drowning, you might say. I felt sorry for those little words. And I began to ask myself, What am I doing? What am I replicating here? It was sad to see those words so isolated and alone inside big stanzas filled with English.

So that led me to an interest in really trying to write poems, 100% in Lakota language which led me to work with one of my aunts to create Lakota language classes where we have language lessons, and then we take those lessons and create poems.

The goal was for every student to leave the class having a poem in their hand, written 100% in Lakota language. To be honest, my motivation for holding those classes was a little selfish because I wanted to be able to do that, myself, as well. I was both a student and a facilitator at the same time.

And now that I'm talking about it, I'm realizing I want to do that more with my aunt, so I'd like to return to that. It’s fun. So anyway, that's one way that my approach to working with our language has changed. I'm more interested in challenging myself to try to write poems that are 100% in our language, even if they’re short or the sentences are very simple, structurally.

OUN: You’re not only someone who strictly utilizes language and the page when it comes to creating poetry, you have also turned to other mediums such as quilt making, sculptures, and photography. We see some of this in Whereas through the freedom of form such as in the third part of “Ȟe Sápa”, but the other mediums you’ve explored don’t necessarily make an appearance. I was wondering if, in your upcoming collection, WE, if some of your more visual works were going to be interspersed?

Yes, this second manuscript combines photographs of my installations and some of the pieces that have been on exhibit. And then a lot of times when I am working visually or sculpturally, I write things as I'm working as well. So, I'm working in sort of parallel ways. Yes, it's almost like the left hand and right hand. The visual and the text begin to communicate with each other. So, a lot of those visual works will be almost like section headers in my next manuscript because we'll start with some photographs and then lead the reader into the poems that have come out of those pieces.

OUN: Earlier you mentioned your love of music. I’m curious since you are a multidisciplinary artist, if you’ve ever had any interest in exploring soundscapes or implementing poetry into your musical endeavors?

I would love to work with sound. One day I feel I should work with sound again. I feel I would need a whole chunk of time set aside only for sound and not writing, not making anything visual, just really devoting myself to that one thing.

Working with sound and sonic spaces, you know, of all the ways that I work, it's the most emotional territory, and I have to be very careful with it because I get super emo. I don't know how to describe it. I want to say I just get very emotional because it’s a very primal artistic expression. You can create feeling without saying a word.

And you can completely shift the tone of an event or an experience based on sound. I hate to say it, but the music that I tend to make is not joyous. It's a little bit moody and a little melancholy and sad, and I wish that I could make something different, but I rarely do. And so I have to work with sound in small doses. I have to be careful with it.

When I was younger, I was very emo, growing up, and that was when I was devoted to music. I feel like I changed a lot when I started writing and working more visually. It’s almost like my character changed in some ways, and you know what's funny now, I can't even listen to moody music. I don't want to feel melancholy, and so I can only listen to things that are very light and buoyant and easy on the spirit. So I listen to total pop trash now. I can't go to heavy or serious music anymore, because I'm all delicate now (laughing).

OUN: I hope I get there someday too. What strikes me the most in what you just shared is that maybe it's not work that's necessarily meant to be shared. Maybe it's work that is meant to be just for you, the act of creating is where the emphasis is rather than the output.

I agree, yes.

OUN: Some of your poems speak of personal experiences and memories, creating a realm of admittance that bleeds through the crafting of your words. It is both your life and the intentionality of creating a provocation for readers interacting with the page. How do you make sense of these personal acts of shedding and sculpting that are later shared with a larger unknown audience?

Trust me, what you see on the page is the tip of the iceberg. There are so many things I have experienced and I have lived through that will never make it onto the page.

OUN: I think that's the beauty of it, that you can keep stuff to yourself, but I also believe sometimes, especially now, in this incredibly digitized age, there is an impulse to get everything out there.

True. Yet, there is so much that I do not share, will never share on the page, and I'm not interested in sharing on the page or having people know about it because it's personal. It's private growth. It's our pathway through life. And ultimately, maybe I'm getting too deep… but it’s a pathway that goes to the spiritual realm. It’s never-ending. So, people don't need to know everything. With that said, the things that I do choose to share on the page then, are often things that have an intention. Not always, but often. The intention, as I understand it, is bigger than just processing my own experience. So you read a lot in Whereas where I share something of my family life or my private life, but all of those applied in some way to this national apology that I was addressing. So I was very clear in my purpose or objective when sharing something of my personal life.

I don't want to make it sound rigid, though. For example, there’s a piece in Whereas where I wrote about miscarriage. I had several miscarriages when I was younger, and that was a dark and difficult time of my life. And thank God, I'm past those years. But at the time, when I wrote about that, it was very healing to put it on the page. There was something about being able to contain an experience literally to an 8-and-a-half by 11-size container. Inside a little rectangle, I put it all in. I gathered it up, and I put it in there, and believe it or not, it was healing to come to the end of that poem. Then, I was able to put that page aside, and set it next to me. It's almost like I put it in that box “over there.” So that's what I mean when I say that it's not all black and white. Sometimes I do share personal things for personal reasons, but many times I'm still aware that it's for a purpose that is bigger than my own experience.

RR: Can you talk a little bit about form? You talked about the box and Yaccaira Salvatierra, also uses a box that has an opening, so emotions and ideas can go out to the ocean. And you have poems that are written in the form of a box. Tell me, how do you use form for your poetry? I know it's a basic question, but I'm curious about why it's so important to your poetry.

You said, well, it's a basic part of the work we do as a poet. A poem is not an essay. It's not an online article. There's so much room in a poem for fragmentation, for mystery, for sound. As a poet, I'm always remembering that we are not just writing, but we are also sound artists and visual artists. We are working with shape. We are working with space on the page, It’s a big question, but the reason form is important to me, personally, is because I know that the way a thing looks, the shape of it, communicates something before anyone even reads a single word.

RR: I appreciate that. That's helpful to me.

I don't know if you've ever gone to a bookstore, flipped through a book, flipped through the pages, and stopped on a particular page because of the way it looks. It looks interesting, right? It caught your eye. It waved at you. It said something. It said hello and invited you in. So that's part of the way that form works for me. It is a way of communicating once again, that is not dependent on language. As strange as it sounds, I'm always trying to escape the demands of language and kind of work around the edges.

RR: I love it. What I'm hearing is that there are so many ways to read a poem. I'm very new to poetry, so I'm very curious about the words. But you're telling me that there's much more to the poem than just the words. It's the form, the layout, the feeling.

Yes.

You mentioned that poetry is subversive. Describe how poetry is subversive. I once asked Ramona Emerson, “How would you decolonize Gallup?” And she said she would do it by putting a bookstore there. I didn't expect that answer, but it makes perfect sense. It would give them access to ideas and let them see themselves in literature and poetry. A bookstore, in a sense, can be subversive. And I'm curious about how a poem can be subversive or help in terms of this process of decolonizing.

Most poets are sort of pushing against the grain, right? And so this is the medium for them to speak to power and to use language in a way that is not just meeting the reader, or meeting humanity through logic, but through a kind of emotional potency that is difficult to achieve in any other medium aside from poetry. So, I think that that's all I can say about that.

Nothing more to say. Thank you so much for your grace in letting us interview you. It has been a privilege.

Rey M. Rodríguez is a writer, advocate, and attorney. He lives in Pasadena, California. He is working on a novel set in Mexico City and a poetry book inspired by a prominent nonprofit in East LA. He has attended the Yale Writers' Workshop multiple times and Palabras de Pueblo workshop once. He also participates in Story Studio's Novel in a Year Program. He is a first-year fiction creative writing student at the Institute of American Indian Arts' MFA Program. This fall, his poetry is published in Huizache. His other interviews and book reviews can be found at La Bloga, the world's longest-established Chicana-Chicano, Latina-Latino literary blog, Chapter House's Storyteller’s Blog, Pleiades Magazine, and the Los Angeles Review.

Oona Narváez is a Mexican American/Indigenous writer from El Paso, TX. After earning a BA in English American Literature, she is now pursuing an MFA in Poetry at IAIA