Joan Naviyuk Kane : with snow pouring southward past the window

Joan Naviyuk Kane : with snow pouring southward past the window

From Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & Poetry by David Naimon, Milkweed Editions

March 12, 2026 · 2h 39m

About this episode

Joan Naviyuk Kane discusses her poetry and themes of identity, dispossession, and language within the context of the indigenous circumpolar North.

When Cynthia Cruz describes Joan Naviyuk Kane’s latest collection as a series of poems that “both shows and enacts how a self is brought to being through the abyss,” I think of Kane’s own words about poetry: as “a place of refuge and possibility, a generative space. Not a space of loss, but contingence.” What is a home in the face of dispossession? Inheritance in the face of rupture and colonial erasure? And what is the role of language on behalf of continuity and continuation? We explore all of these questions and much more, both generally, but also quite granularly within the context of the indigenous circumpolar North. For the bonus audio archive, Joan contributes the reading of a long poem, one that she is still working on, called “Provisionally.” She grants us a sneak peek of a poem that she has been drafting and revising for a year, in its current provisional form. This joins many remarkable contributions— from everyone from Layli Long Soldier to Dionne Brand, Isabella Hammad to Arthur Sze, Jorie Graham to Danez Smith. Find out how to subscribe to the bonus audio, and about the other potential benefits and rewards of joining…

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