Emerging BIWOC Poet Spotlight
This monthly series features poems by women of color in the early stages of their careers. It is our intention to create more space at Perugia for the work of BIWOC, and we hope using our modest platform to celebrate this work will expand the readership of the poets we spotlight. This series aligns with Perugia’s mission to support and promote emerging women poets; all the featured poems will be from BIWOC poets with no more than one published full-length collection. We’d love to hear from readers with suggestions for poems & poets to feature.
November 2022 Poet: MARIE TOZIER
She Even Used a Ruler
Grandmother left me her prized possessions.
Kuspuk patterns she used to outfit herself
and her daughters in custom-made tops.
Her patterns were cut from a windbreaker,
deep maroon and old. I’ve made the pattern
pieces my own, traced them onto brown paper.
She told me how the front piece flatters a woman,
even if she’s fat. She showed me how to measure
the hood, how to press the fabric without an iron.
Her sharp eye drawn to minor flaws,
she reminded me to be precise.
Use a ruler to be exact,
like her.
Source
Open the Dark, Boreal Books, 2020
Poet Bio
Marie Tozier has devoted much of her life to passing down traditional skills and ways of knowing. She can show you how to butcher a seal. She has led classes in sewing, quilting, knitting, and qiviut processing. She leads a poetry workshop for Alaska Pacific University, and her poetry has appeared in Yellow Medicine Review, Cirque, Alaska Quarterly Review, and Catamaran Literary Reader. Subsistence, hardship, celebration—her poems spring from the tundra, from rural life and family life. Reviewer Corinna Cook says that Open the Dark is “full of the rhythms of seasons and family and ancient narratives, but it is also about the open wound of residential school history.” In her poem “They Tried to Teach Me History,” Tozier pushes back against systemic attempts to obliterate all things native, making room for grief and for a world where there is enough for everyone. She lives in Nome, Alaska with her beloved Tok and their children.