An Evening of Native American Poetry

Come out and celebrate National Poetry Month! Saratoga Springs Poet Laureate Joe Bruchac will read and perform, followed by poet Lance Henson.

Mr. Henson is a member of the Southern Cheyenne Nation, a cultural activist, teacher, and author of several books of poems.

In addition to being a widely published poet, Dr. Bruchac is a storyteller, musician, and member of the Nulhegan Abenaki Nation. No registration is required for this event.

Lance Henson is a poet, cultural activist, and teacher. A member of the Cheyenne Nation of Oklahoma, he grew up near Calumet, Oklahoma, where his grandparents raised him in the traditions of the Cheyenne tribe. He has published 50 volumes of poetry, which have been translated into 25 languages. Henson has also worked as a cultural ambassador including serving as an NGO member at the Working Group of Indigenous Populations in Geneva, Switzerland for 18 years. His books of poetry include The Missing Bead (2009) and The Wolf Texts (2009), and has co-written plays produced at venues including La MaMa Experimental Theatre Company. His first book of poetry, Keeper of Arrows, was published  in 1971 when he was still a student at Oklahoma College of Liberal Arts. As part of the State Arts Council of Oklahoma’s Artist in Residence Program, he conducted poetry workshops throughout that state for 10 years.  Since then, he has traveled around the world lecturing and doing readings of his poetry. In his travels throughout the United States, the Middle East, and Europe, he has been a poet in residence at more than 800 schools.

Joseph Bruchac, currently the Poet Laureate of Saratoga Springs, is a poet, writer, musician, and traditional storyteller, who has published more than 180 books in many genres since his first collections of poetry in 1971. A tribally enrolled member of the Nulhegan Abenaki Nation, his poems, articles and stories have appeared in over 1000 publications, from Akwesasne Notes and The American Poetry Review to Scholastic, National Geographic Magazine and Parabola. He has edited a number of anthologies of contemporary poetry and fiction, including Songs from this Earth on Turtle’s Back, Breaking Silence (winner of an American Book Award) and Returning the Gift. As a founding member of the Wordcraft Circle of Native American Writers and Storytellers and publisher of the Greenfield Review Press, for more than five decades he has been a part of Native American literary networks across the continent, advocating for reciprocal relationships that connect writers and communities.