Talking Gourds: Thompson Performs from the Rez for Bardic Trails, 9/3

28 Aug Talking Gourds: Thompson Performs from the Rez for Bardic Trails, 9/3

Talking Gourds announces the Bardic Trails virtual poetry series continues with Michael Thompson, a Mvskoke Creek poet, writer and retired educator living on the Navajo Nation with wife and Diné poet Tina Deschenie. 

No longer needing to register with the library, participants are encouraged to visit here to get the zoom link each month, if they aren’t already on the mailing list.

Bardic Trails is a project of the Telluride Institute’s Talking Gourds Poetry Program in collaboration with Telluride’s Wilkinson Public Library.

Go here for more about Talking Gourds.

“A strong performer of his poem stories, Michael makes us re-inhabit a West those of us descendants of settler/colonialists may not know,” said Talking Gourds director Art Goodtimes. “Michael and Tina both had poems in the Ah Haa show this past winter in Telluride: In Their Own Words: A Poetry Experience / Según Sus Palabras: Una Experiencia Poetica.”

Thompson was born in Holdenville, OK,  then raised on a South Georgia cattle ranch and row-crop farm near the Flint River, among pine trees, oaks, creeks, and swamp. He taught for 42 years at various levels of education in Georgia, Kansas, California, and New Mexico.

For most of his life, Thompson was a high school English teacher. Today, he and his wife are restoring her family homesite and raising cattle on the Navajo Nation in Crystal, NM. They have four children and several grandchildren. Their family supports numerous Native American activities, traditions, and causes.

In addition to work in various journals, Thompson has contributed to the following publications: Fertile: An Anthology of Earth Poems & Prose, Fourth Corner Press (2023); Satchel: Story Objects, Art Juice Studio Press (2022); Transforming Diné Education, University of Arizona Press (2022); The Diné Reader: An Anthology of Navajo Literature, University of Arizona Press, “Resources for Readers” (2021); WET: An Anthology of Water Poems & Prose, Sharehouse Press, Co-editor (2021); Trickster (a graphic anthology); Rabbit and the Tug of War, Fulcrum Books (2010); American Indians and the Urban Experience, AltaMira Press (2001).

Bardic Trails has undergone some recent changes. Talking Gourds is now solo hosting the virtual zoom series on the first Tuesday of each month, although the Wilkinson Public Library will continue as a collaboration partner and fiscal agent. Also, San Miguel County Poet Laureate, Joanna Yonder, will continue to assist Goodtimes in facilitating the zoom.

Joanna recommends “The Turn” as the prompt for this month for those who want one. [Nota Bene: The volta, or turn, is a rhetorical shift or dramatic change in thought and/or emotion. Turns are seen in all types of written poetry.]