Your cart is currently empty!
Tributaries: Smokii Sumac + Born Sacred
In their new collection Born Sacred (Fernwood Publishing), Smokii Sumac writes 100 poems that bear witness to the genocide in Palestine. He shares the development of writing poems about internal feelings to external, global oppression, as well as their hope to continue bearing witness toward Elderhood, as Lee Maracle did before them.
Read “Poem 79”
from Born Sacred: Poems for Palestine
An interview with poet Smokii Sumac
All Lit Up: Can you tell us a bit about your book and how it came to be? How did you come to write “Poem 79,” and how is it representative of your collection?
Smokii Sumac: Born Sacred: Poems for Palestine is a collection of one hundred poems I wrote between October 2023 and April 2024, as I witnessed the escalation of violence against Palestinians in Gaza through my phone screen on social media. I began writing as I heard the call from Palestinians to speak out and use our voices to tell their stories, to fight against what was happening, and to bear witness. Poem 79 was written in a moment of feeling the hopelessness of wondering what poems really do, when we haven’t seen an end to genocide yet, however, this poem also shares the inspirational story of a protestor lighting a candle outside of the white house every day during the Vietnam war. This poem illustrates how each poem in the collection is related to what I was feeling and witnessing each day in relation to Palestine. The crux of this poem comes in the lines “i write these poems / so they don’t / change / me”
This book is a commitment to the movement for a Free Palestine, and this poem is connected to that endeavour as one small act of witnessing and finding hope in the actions of others, in spite of the hopelessness we may feel when seeing so much death and destruction that feels often unstoppable.
ALU: Has your idea of poetry changed since you began writing?
Smokii Sumac: I believe that my idea, or perhaps my philosophy of poetry has both grown and changed, and yet somehow also stayed the same. When I truly think about why I write poetry, it has always been about connection. I do think that when I started, poetry was often about my internal feelings—when I teach students I often share that I write when “a feeling gets too big for me to hold,” and I believe that is still true to this day. The change and shift, though, is how those “big feelings” have become about something more collective than my initial writing. Of course, this comes with growing up. Where the feelings I was writing in my teenage poetry were perhaps more about my own life, whether it be about what was going on in my family, or with my friends, today I am writing about global oppression, like this collection which is dedicated to Palestinian life in the hopes that if I continue to speak and educate people we can end the current genocide. I think this has always been something that I have been moving towards in my work, as I draw connections between what has happened and continues to happen to Indigenous people like myself, and to those across the world, or when I draw connections between oppressions, like those we face as trans people, and those faced by Palestinians, Black people, and Indigenous people.
ALU: What drew you to poetry? What do you most value about poetry?
Smokii Sumac: I think a good poem can draw you in and make you feel the way the poet felt in the moment of writing it. This is what captures me—when a poem catches me and takes me into something that perhaps I have felt before, but maybe didn’t have my own words for. In this process of writing Born Sacred, I came to value the collective connection that could be found when sharing a poem of what was happening, and finding others who were feeling and resonating with it. In the fight against oppression, it is so important for us to know we are not alone, and poetry has the ability to make those connections.
One other thing is that sometimes I can’t say it all. Sometimes my breath is taken away and there are no words, such as when I witnessed Reem’s grandfather holding her small martyred body, or when I heard the recording of dearest Hind calling for help. When I saw an unnamed child’s body half blown off by the bombs. These are words I have difficulty typing now, and I am months removed from those images. In the days I was writing these poems, I could not write it out in the same way I may be able to now. I needed space on the page. I needed to be able to find a way to share the feeling, without breath. Poetry gave me that.
ALU: If your collection had a theme song, what would it be?
Smokii Sumac: Kimmortal’s “stop business as usual”
ALU: Choose a non-written piece of art that you feel is a “sister city” or companion to your collection.
Smokii Sumac: Zaynab Mohammed’s “A Curtain of Ancestors”
Smokii recommends…
“Remembering Mahmoud 1976” from Lee Maracle’s
Talking to the Diaspora (ARP Books)
ALU: Why did you choose Lee Maracle’s poem “Remembering Mahmoud 1976” from her collection Talking to the Diaspora? What do you love most about this particular poem?
Smokii Sumac: I chose Lee Maracle’s “Remembering Mahmoud 1976” from Talking to the Diaspora, because this poem and book found me in the days of writing Born Sacred, and reminded me that our aunties and ancestors have been fighting genocide for generations. I was 27 years old when Maracle published this collection (2015), and as I share in the introduction to Born Sacred, I was, at that time, still very much ignorant about what Palestinians were going through. When I found Maracle’s book and this poem for Mahmoud Darwish, I realized that there has been a longtime relationship between Indigenous people of “turtle island” (what some call North America), and Palestine. I was grateful to remember that there have always been aunties and Elders before me doing this work, and to be picking up that thread and weaving my way into my own Elderhood, where I can then trust younger folks to continue this connection on. This is what brings me hope- solidarity movements across generations. As much as I call on all of us to do more in our every day to stop the horrors we are witnessing, I also know that every move we make continues to pull at the edges of injustice, and that even if it’s not in my lifetime, we will one day see land back, we will see reparations, we will see the fall of empire and a free Palestine.
Remembering Mahmoud 1976
Mahmoud’s poems are beads of sweat
dripping from stressed and weathered foreheads
to fall near silent amid incessant Israeli bombs
to rise—blood—from between the bits of rubble
clutched by Palestinians chasing a livelihood
from a shrinking land base
They become desperate word flowers
blooming nonetheless from a land
occupied by settlers
chronically stealing the lives of children
It’s December
Toronto
Gaza is on fire
again
another Wounded Knee
another massacre
no muskets this time
tanks, monster machines
bombs and missiles pummel the children
How brave is that?
-40 Celsius in Winnipeg
Palestinians and Indigenous children wave placards
Stop killing children in Palestine
Free Gaza
My tears freeze on my face
my daughter is there
just as she was there 35 years ago
chanting Free Palestindians
my frozen tears cut pain lines on my face
In between the rubble
Darwish’s last words look at the world
say good-bye to Edward Said
peer past the camps, the bombs, the hypocrisy
stubborn
resistant
Eternal
There is no tomorrow in yesterday,
so let us advance
I stare at a photo
a small boy cradles a pair of stones
gleaned from the rubble
I imagine him hearing
Darwish’s ghostly words
these stones testify
this is his home
he clutches them
he looks set to advance
the stones are no longer simply rubble
they cradle a story
they cradle his memory
they cradle his hope
they cradle Darwish’s last testament:
There is no tomorrow in yesterday,
so let us advance
In this boy’s hands the stones transform
they are the story markers of his future
they are his beginning
beloved stones, last bits of a place called home
they become stones of conscience
they are his stones of pride
they will become his stones of belonging
they are the rocks of justice for all of us
His face is set
his eyes see past this rubble
they see forward to his return
forward to the restoration of his homeland
forward to the right of return
In his eyes I see Indigenous global tenacity
I touch the stones in the photo
caress his face
commit to building a bridge
an arc of light
under this wind of war
of dispossession
I want to build a pathway
and blow us all toward freedom and justice
I want the wind of freedom to echo
the resonance of Mahmoud’s breath tracks
Let us pick up this stone of justice
build this bridge
that will lead us to the laughter of belonging
of being where we belong
of being who we are and always will be
This light shines back at me from his eyes
the light illuminates his stones
bound as these stones are to his resolve
to traverse across the abyss
between his refuge and the tanks
My commitment to Palestine floats
the light emanating from his eyes captures my heart
I whisper Palestine, Palestine—Free Palestine
Wounded Knee, no more Wounded Knees
I imagine him listening, hearing me
nearly smiling
just before he throws his stones
Reprinted with permission from ARP Books.
* * *
Smokii Sumac (they/he) is a Ktunaxa two-spirit poet and emerging playwright. Their first book, you are enough: love poems for the end of the world won an Indigenous Voices Award. Indigenous sovereignty and centring our own knowledges is deeply important to Smokii’s creative work. He believes in the power of storytelling and has featured Indigenous writers and musicians on The ʔasqanaki Podcast, a limited podcast series that Smokii created and hosts. Their first play, Seven and One Heart, was workshopped in Montreal and developed in Toronto during the 2024 Weesageechak Begins to Dance festival. Smokii will be also releasing a Canada Council–funded spoken word album in spring 2025. Smokii is happy to live in his home territories of ʔamakʔis Ktunaxa, near the banks of the Kootenay River, with his husband, their cats, chicken, and a “big ole rez dog” named Kootenay Lou.
* * *
Thanks to Smokii for answering our questions, and to Fernwood Publishing for the text of “Poem 79” from Born Sacred, which is available to order now (and get 15% off with the code TRIBUTARIES until April 30!). Thanks also to ARP Books for the text of “Remembering Mahmoud 1976” from Lee Maracle’s Talking to the Diaspora.
Follow our NPM series all month long to discover new poetry or connect with old favourites, and visit our poetry shop here.
