What do you think?
Rate this book
Undocumented: Great Lakes Poets Laureate on Social Justice
Focusing on contemporary issues, this text showcases a large collection of regional poets laureate writing on subjects critical to understanding social justice as it relates to the Great Lakes region. Undocumented: Great Lakes Poets Laureate on Social Justice includes writing by seventy-eight poets who truly represent the diversity of the Great Lakes region, including Rita Dove, Marvin Bell, Crystal Valentine, Kimberly Blaeser, Mary Weems, Karen Kovacik, Wendy Vardaman, Zora Howard, Carla Christopher, Meredith Holmes, Karla Huston, Joyce Sutphen, and Laren McClung, among others. City, state, and national poets laureate with ties to Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, Ohio, Ontario, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin appear in these pages, organized around themes from the Southern Poverty Law Center's "Ten Ways to Fight Hate: A Community Response Guide," calling on readers to act on behalf of victims of social injustice.
- GenresPoetryAnthologies
326 pages, Paperback
Published March 1, 2019
50 people want to read
About the author
Ron Riekki
24 books14 followersRon Riekki’s books include U.P.: a novel (Ghost Road Press) and Posttraumatic: A Memoir (Hoot ‘n’ Waddle/Four Chambers Press), as well as the upcoming hybrid collection My Ancestors are Reindeer Herders and I Am Melting in Extinction (Loyola University Maryland’s Apprentice House Press, 2019) and the poetry book i have been warned not to write about this (Main Street Rag, 2020). Riekki co-edited Undocumented: Great Lakes Poets Laureate on Social Justice (Michigan State University Press) and The Many Lives of The Evil Dead: Essays on the Cult Film Franchise (McFarland), and edited And Here: 100 Years of Upper Peninsula Writing, 1917-2017 (MSU Press), Here: Women Writing on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula (MSU Press, Independent Publisher Book Award), The Way North: Collected Upper Peninsula New Works (Wayne State University Press, Michigan Notable Book). He has anthologies upcoming with McFarland and WSU Press. His fiction has been published in The Threepenny Review, Bellevue Literary Review, Wigleaf, Prairie Schooner, Shenandoah, Akashic Books, Juked, New Ohio Review, Cleaver, Puerto del Sol, and many other literary journals. Riekki’s story “Accidents” received the 2016 Shenandoah Fiction Prize and “The Family Jewel” was selected for The Best Small Fictions 2015.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
![Profile Image for s.penkevich [hiatus-will return-miss you all].](/_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.gr-assets.com%2Fimages%2FS%2Fcompressed.photo.goodreads.com%2Fusers%2F1735525095i%2F6431467._UX200_CR0%2C11%2C200%2C200_.jpg&w=128&q=75)
March 13, 2019
The ship is sunk and the damage is done
Someone
Let the poets in
-Craig Czury
I was lucky enough to attend a lecture by Claudia Rankine a few years ago where she said something I’ll never forget. She said when a hateful thing is said, we have the responsibility to “not let it occupy the space.” She cautioned that if we do not speak up and speak out against it, than we are no better than the hateful words spoken that at least made themselves heard. In this regard, Undocumented: Great Lakes Poet Laureate on Social Justice, is a powerful poetry anthology speaking out against hate. Collected here are the voices of local Poet Laureate from the Great Lakes region--the area where I grew up and live--signing out in a choir bearing witness against injustices. As someone who believes in speaking out, this is a great collection that informs as much as it inspires and covers a vast array of important social subjects such as (but not limited to) violence, racial relations, gender equity, subverting gender norms, immigration, wealth inequality and more.
American Psalm: Viola Liuzzo--American Hero
--M.L. Liebler
I come from a place
Where unspoken heroes
Are born to make a difference
And are ever heard from again.
Aside from the selections from the major US Poet Laureate--Rita Dove, Louise Bogan and Donald Hall--this is the first publication of all the included poetry. This is a great collection of fresh and diverse voices from Youth Poet Laureate to indigenous voices and it is fascinating to see which places have a Laureate position. I discovered that Grand Rapids, about a half hour drive from me, has one but sadly my place of residence here in Holland does not. Collected here are city, state or Canadian province Laureates all with an important message to deliver. These poems crackle with power on the page and remind us to stay alert in the modern age.
In the face of hate, silence is deadly. Apathy will be interpreted as acceptance--by the perpetrators, the public, and--worse--the victims. If left unchallenged, hate persists and grows.
--SLPC, Ten Ways to Fight Hate
The themes within Undocumented are divided into 10 sections, each with a passage from the Southern Poverty Law Center’s community guidelines Ten Ways to Fight Hate. These headings include: Act, Unite, Support Victims, Create an Alternative (‘hold a unity rally or parade to draw media attention away from hate’), Speak Up, Teach Tolerance (‘Bias is learned early, often at home...reach out to young people who may be susceptible to hate, group propaganda and prejudice’), What Can You Do?, etc. These passages and the way the poems are organized make for a helpful guide to inspire social progress.
Expand your community’s comfort zones so you can learn and live together
If this sounds overly political, it should be remembered that all art is political. In a 2018 interview with The Guardian, poet Danez Smith says “In poems not obviously political, the writer is trying to avoid something.” To not be political is, in effect, a political statement. A primary theme in Ilya Kaminsky’s brilliant collection Deaf Republic: Poems is that silence can be both the sound of resistance but also complicity. ‘Mostly I learned the female are / of silence’ writes Paula Hansel, Poet Laureate of Cincinnati, Oh in her poem Passage. Silence has often been taught or imposed in the communities the powerful are most apt to oppress. The poems here are about breaking that silence, about standing up against complicity, against violence, against injustice.
⅘
Resolve
--Louise Bogan
So that I shall no longer tarnish with my fingers
The bright steel of your power,
I shall be hardened against you,
A shield tightened upon its rim.
A stern oval to be pierced by no weapon,
Metal stretched and shaped against you.
For a long time I shall go
Spanned by the round of my strength.
Changeless, in spite of change,
My resolve undefeated;
Though now I see the evening moon, soon to wane,
Stand clearly and alone in the early dark,
Above the stirring spindles of the leaves.
Someone
Let the poets in
-Craig Czury
I was lucky enough to attend a lecture by Claudia Rankine a few years ago where she said something I’ll never forget. She said when a hateful thing is said, we have the responsibility to “not let it occupy the space.” She cautioned that if we do not speak up and speak out against it, than we are no better than the hateful words spoken that at least made themselves heard. In this regard, Undocumented: Great Lakes Poet Laureate on Social Justice, is a powerful poetry anthology speaking out against hate. Collected here are the voices of local Poet Laureate from the Great Lakes region--the area where I grew up and live--signing out in a choir bearing witness against injustices. As someone who believes in speaking out, this is a great collection that informs as much as it inspires and covers a vast array of important social subjects such as (but not limited to) violence, racial relations, gender equity, subverting gender norms, immigration, wealth inequality and more.
American Psalm: Viola Liuzzo--American Hero
--M.L. Liebler
I come from a place
Where unspoken heroes
Are born to make a difference
And are ever heard from again.
Aside from the selections from the major US Poet Laureate--Rita Dove, Louise Bogan and Donald Hall--this is the first publication of all the included poetry. This is a great collection of fresh and diverse voices from Youth Poet Laureate to indigenous voices and it is fascinating to see which places have a Laureate position. I discovered that Grand Rapids, about a half hour drive from me, has one but sadly my place of residence here in Holland does not. Collected here are city, state or Canadian province Laureates all with an important message to deliver. These poems crackle with power on the page and remind us to stay alert in the modern age.
In the face of hate, silence is deadly. Apathy will be interpreted as acceptance--by the perpetrators, the public, and--worse--the victims. If left unchallenged, hate persists and grows.
--SLPC, Ten Ways to Fight Hate
The themes within Undocumented are divided into 10 sections, each with a passage from the Southern Poverty Law Center’s community guidelines Ten Ways to Fight Hate. These headings include: Act, Unite, Support Victims, Create an Alternative (‘hold a unity rally or parade to draw media attention away from hate’), Speak Up, Teach Tolerance (‘Bias is learned early, often at home...reach out to young people who may be susceptible to hate, group propaganda and prejudice’), What Can You Do?, etc. These passages and the way the poems are organized make for a helpful guide to inspire social progress.
Expand your community’s comfort zones so you can learn and live together
If this sounds overly political, it should be remembered that all art is political. In a 2018 interview with The Guardian, poet Danez Smith says “In poems not obviously political, the writer is trying to avoid something.” To not be political is, in effect, a political statement. A primary theme in Ilya Kaminsky’s brilliant collection Deaf Republic: Poems is that silence can be both the sound of resistance but also complicity. ‘Mostly I learned the female are / of silence’ writes Paula Hansel, Poet Laureate of Cincinnati, Oh in her poem Passage. Silence has often been taught or imposed in the communities the powerful are most apt to oppress. The poems here are about breaking that silence, about standing up against complicity, against violence, against injustice.
⅘
Resolve
--Louise Bogan
So that I shall no longer tarnish with my fingers
The bright steel of your power,
I shall be hardened against you,
A shield tightened upon its rim.
A stern oval to be pierced by no weapon,
Metal stretched and shaped against you.
For a long time I shall go
Spanned by the round of my strength.
Changeless, in spite of change,
My resolve undefeated;
Though now I see the evening moon, soon to wane,
Stand clearly and alone in the early dark,
Above the stirring spindles of the leaves.
July 17, 2020
Dr. King understood that belief is a bridge
to carry us from where we are to where we want to be.
To get there, we still have to rise up and march.
The arc of the universe still needs the weight
of people standing together to make it bend.
to carry us from where we are to where we want to be.
To get there, we still have to rise up and march.
The arc of the universe still needs the weight
of people standing together to make it bend.
October 18, 2019
This collection really had some gems that made me feel, made me think.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews