Tina Cane



Towards a Father / Land Acknowledgment Statement


It is important to understand the longstanding history that prompted me to seek out the man

to understand my first father's place within that history for when I talk about fathers I mean fathers

are a part of who I am a mixture of my blood my past present and future I carry my fathers in me

as do you they are around us all the time     father/land acknowledgments do not exist as past

tense or historical context colonialism is a current ongoing process my first father is half-Cherokee

a former marine right now waiting to see if he needs chemotherapy for Agent Orange cancer he got

fighting in Vietnam I am trying to build mindfulness around my present participation in his life and his

in mine trying to think about my impact my timing my audience specifically who am I speaking this to?

is it you who also have a father? or maybe like me you have many? I wonder what is my end goal?

absolution or resolution? do I hope to inspire others to take action? to prompt support or interaction

is this just a gesture of paternal exhibitionism about my situation about which I have so little information

I do not wish to erase history I am comfortable with mystery am also compelled to honor our past

to build our future with truth thus I choose to recognize this relationship     do you too wish to mark

the beginnings of things with such a statement which to be clear is not the same as action but still  

photo Cormac Crump

Tina Cane serves as the Poet Laureate of Rhode Island where she is the founder and director of Writers-in-the-Schools. Cane is the author of The Fifth Thought, Dear Elena: Letters for Elena Ferrante, poems with art by Esther Solondz (Skillman Books, 2016), Once More With Feeling (Veliz Books 2017), Body of Work (Veliz Books, 2019), and Year of the Murder Hornet (Veliz Books, 2022). In 2016, Tina received the Fellowship Merit Award in Poetry from the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts. She was also a 2020 Poet Laureate Fellow with the Academy of American Poets. Her debut novel-in-verse for young adults, Alma Presses Play (Penguin/Random House), was released in September 2021. Her second novel-in-verse for young readers, Are You Nobody, Too?, is forthcoming from Make Me a World/ Random House. Cane is also the creator and curator of the distance reading series Poetry is Bread and the editor of Poetry is Bread: The Anthology (forthcoming from Nirala Press, 2023).

ISSN 2472-338X
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