KARAN

First thing that strikes me about your poems, Kinsale, is how gorgeously you use elemental forces of nature. I know right away here’s a poet who loves the earth, the ecological world. In “Boy of Lightning, Girl of Fire,” which is essentially a love poem, your use of lightning and fire to represent the characters' intense emotions and tumultuous experiences is just wonderful! I mean: “The mountain cries light when he plays his guitar thunderstorms.” I love that! In “surviving a breakup, old Indian style,” nature is a comforting presence, symbolized through turquoise and its temperature likened to the narrator’s mother's hands, providing a grounding and healing connection during personal turmoil. Do you think of yourself as an eco-poet? 

KINSALE

I do love the earth. I love writing about the earth and all its creatures in surprising, stunning ways. I also love that tons of Native poets won’t label themselves eco-poets.

I took an ecopoetry course in college, and we began learning ecopoetry through the Bible. Adam and Eve, and the Garden. I remember thinking that if you’re trying to convince a certain demographic of students, let’s say coming from a worldview that undervalues and commodifies the earth, that framework could work as the beginning of humans writing about their relationship to nature, whatever “humans” or “nature” might mean in that context. But I was interested in reciprocal, nonlinear relationships with the land and water and non-human beings before I knew what ecopoetry was, and so many others were doing that long before I was, too. None of it involved the Bible or pastoralism—it was usually from teachings, passed down through generations. Prayers, songs, stories.

Traditional ideas about the natural world truthfully precede the founding of ecopoetry and its solidification in the 20th century. Some scholars might disagree on the beginnings of ecopoetry, but almost all would agree that Indigenous writers were not accepted as a part of the movement until the late 20th century, when environmentalism and ecocentrism became more popular. And, at the same time, I can’t talk about ecopoetry without talking about eco-Indians. As a Navajo writer, I’m always battling stereotypes of Indigenous peoples that readers bring to the page— namely the monolith of the sappy “eco-Indian,” which is, you know, Iron Eyes Cody (an Italian dude in cosplay) with a tear coming down his cheek, helpless to stop the destruction of his homelands and white people from littering. A lot of our audiences expect tragedy and passiveness because Native peoples exist in a fictional American past. The truth is, Native communities have survived hell, and survived the apocalypse, and many are still fighting to protect their land, from the Arctic to Oak Flat. We can write whatever poetry about it that we want to. It’s an interesting level of self-awareness to have, and certainly powerful at the scale of poetics, which close observation and research lends itself very well to. I love engaging with what Jake Skeets refers to as “radical remembering,” or accessing a “memory field” unique to Indigenous peoples upending settler notions of temporality, space, and land. It’s almost like Native writers are engaging with more dimensions—across space and time—because our languages do, and our stories do. It's very moving.

That’s a long way to say it’s complicated. I write about the natural world however I want, but always with respect. I say learn the history behind ecopoetry first, especially its roots in pastoralism, imperialism . . . define it for yourself, seek to understand it, and then see if your work speaks to its poetry, and vice-versa. I’m always down to resist and question categories, if that’s your thing. 

KARAN

That is totally my thing, Kinsale! I love that well-informed answer. I also really love it when love poems transcend and become powerfully political. “Boy of Lightning, Girl of Fire” describes births marked by natural disasters, linking personal history to larger events like uranium mining affecting Indigenous lands, portraying a life that emerges in resistance to environmental and cultural degradation. “good fire” too discusses ecological destruction and cultural loss, using fire as a cleansing force but also as a symbol of renewal and resistance against the forces that threaten cultural survival. “You survive the end of the world in Kayenta, AZ with your mother” too shows resilience through cultural practices and maternal relationships, finding solace in tradition and community amidst the apocalyptic imagery of a world that persists in adversity. What are your thoughts on political poetry? 

KINSALE

What’s so funny is that I feel that every Native person I meet has the most incredible, unbelievable family stories. And if you’re a good storyteller and a better listener, you don’t have to imbue meaning into these stories because it’s already there. Most of the time, I just unpack a story in the context of its time to illuminate certain themes or symbols. For example—What’s the context here? What’s going on? is something I might ask my students to expand their sense of scale. Everything is political by nature, because we’re sociocultural human beings with intersecting, complicated histories. In “good fire,” for example, there’s the historical context that tribes in California have been practicing controlled burnings for centuries, and federal suppression of these practices results in devastating wildfires. Everybody who has lived in the state can bear witness to the devastating effects of climate change, but do they know the history? Suddenly, the news cycle acts like they’re just discovering this. That’s all technically political intrigue, but the overall tone of the poem is mourning and offering. I think the soul of that piece is the most important part, and technically that’s political too.

KARAN

You’re exploring themes of disillusionment and identity through spiritual and existential lenses. “An Altar for Lost Girls” most overtly uses spiritual imagery to transform mundane experiences into sacred rites, blending the spiritual and the everyday in the lives of young women who confront both literal and metaphorical deaths. Despite feeling abandoned by divine help, there’s faith: “lost girls are messengers from God,” suggesting a reclaiming of agency. “Song for the black cat outside my mother's apartment” too explores themes of superstition and otherness, presenting the black cat as a creature of the night, misunderstood and stigmatized, akin to certain human experiences. I’d love to know your spiritual leanings, and how do they influence your poetics?

KINSALE

I’m technically baptized Catholic, but with a Navajo mother who had parents that blended Protestantism with Navajo spiritual beliefs to keep those beliefs and ceremonial practices alive during a time when they were outlawed. My maternal grandfather was kidnapped as a boy and taken to a mission boarding school. My grandmother was raised on the grounds of a mission school, where she was abandoned. My Catholic family was not exactly kind to my mother nor her family for many decades. This is all not long ago, so yes, lots of disillusionment and traumatic relationships with religion. I say all this because it’s a family history that many other Indigenous peoples can relate to.

At the same time, Diné philosophy is based on pillars of kinship, belonging, place, reciprocity. My mom’s family is very traditional. When I was a baby, I learned some of these things by watching her and listening. And she was very intentional in teaching us how to greet the sun, making sure we did our ceremonies, and teaching us exactly who we were as Diné from Navajo Mountain. I learned generosity and goodness from my maternal grandparents. And we also learned the taboos— which are especially important to me because they usually come from stories of surviving old raids or U.S. military campaigns. 

The insistence on survival in the face of genocide, in the face of tragedy and violent assimilation, is incredibly influential on my work and its attitude toward organized religion. Our adaptability, too, carries into my poetry. I’m still here and we’ve got more to say, basically, and I want to explore all of those spiritual and personal contradictions.

KARAN

Over the years, poetry seems to have evolved in its exploration of identity, especially identity of the historically marginalized/oppressed. “How to be born in a country that measures your blood in their hands” directly addresses the racial and identity politics of belonging, using the metaphor of blood quantum to critique policies that define Indigenous identity in terms defined by colonial powers. “Wax Cylinder” engages with the preservation of Native American voices and stories, emphasizing the importance of cultural memory and the struggle against cultural erasure: “The voice will never be lost / while constellations / pulse against the sheaths of glass.” How do you perceive the evolution of your own identity reflected in your poetry, particularly considering the socio-cultural changes you've witnessed? 

KINSALE

I started writing as a young teenager because poetry was the most cohesive, most thoughtful way for me to understand my existence, mostly in the context of my intersecting identities. I mean, how was I supposed to grow and develop as a kid if most of the people I was interacting with knew absolutely nothing about who I even was, what Navajos were, or what histories I was emerging from? Talking about trauma and being real about my family’s strangeness, our flaws, our stories, the nuances of what made us who we were, was just not a reality. Bottling everything up wasn’t healthy either, so in a way my words were an assertion that I wouldn’t be a monolith, and the page was a place I could have some form of agency.

One thing that had always brought me peace was reading and writing my own little stories. I’ve always been a nerd with an affinity for language. I went to college and got my degrees in ethnic studies and English. Critical race theory and Indigenous feminisms contributed so much to my understanding of myself and what meaningful work was to me. It seems simple but just having words for what I had felt but had been unable to articulate as a younger person changed everything. That was an incredible privilege to learn so much in one place. I recognize that. As a writer, I’m almost always a student. I want to learn as much as I can. I want to feel wonder, and I want that for our youth. Community is an essential part of being a writer, and a powerful tool.

In my own work, I try not to use poetry to dance around a topic. I use it to cut right to the core, to expose the meaning, if I can. I love when poems are striking and cerebral and unashamed in their confrontations of history. Layli Long Soldier’s Whereas and Natalie Diaz’s Postcolonial Love Poem come to mind. I like that my poems about identity are strange sometimes because identity is complicated and multilayered. That’s what it is to be human. I think professors that discourage “identity poetry” are sometimes irresponsible, because most of the time what they mean invalidates any kind of poetic exploration of culture, community, or identity that deviates from what they consider canonical. I personally hope we never stop exploring.

KARAN

I love Layli Long Soldier and Natalie Diaz so much! There’s a school of poetry that believes a poem or a poet can categorize their work in one of these four ways: poetry of the body, poetry of the mind, poetry of the heart, poetry of the soul. I can see all these elements in your poems, of course, but where would you put yourself, if any? And do you see yourself moving elsewhere?

KINSALE

Each of those elements help me to compose the feeling, form, body, and song of a poem, though I am so quick to say poetry of the heart. I think my heart guides everything I do, sometimes a little too much. I feel very deeply; it makes me who I am. It can be annoying sometimes! My mind and heart are deeply interconnected, but I’ve been working a lot on poetry of the body because it’s intimate and challenging. I’m in awe of poets that can write about sexuality and the body so openly. I want to do that more.