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    Poet, Writer, Librettist, Scholar of Indigenous American Literature

    Navajo Nation Poet Laureate

    Laura Tohe

    BOOKS

    BOOKS & WRITINGS

    Code Talker Stories, Rio Nuevo Press

    Making Friends with Water

    Out of Print

    Enemy Slayer: A Navajo Oratorio, Laura Tohe (Libretto) and Mark Grey (Composer)

    Sister Nations, Heid Erdrich and Laura Tohe (Editors), New Rivers Press

    This book on boarding schools, No Parole Today, won the 1999 Poetry of the Year awarded by the Wordcraft Circle of Native American Writers and Storytellers. Widely taught in colleges and universities, it is in its 5th printing. 

    Tseyí Deep in the Rock, in collaboration with photographer, Stephen Strom contains poetry and images.  It won the Glyph Award for Best Poetry and Best Book by the Arizona Book Association and was listed as a Southwest Book of the Year by Tucson-Pima Public Library.  

    Code Talker Stories, my most recent book, is an oral history book that contains storytelling interviews with 20 of the remaining Navajo Code Talkers who devised a secret code using the Navajo language that was never deciphered during WWII.  It is a bilingual text in English and Navajo with images by Deborah O’Grady.

    Her chapbook on water, Making Friends with Water was translated into modern dance by The Moving Company in Omaha, Nebraska and was a Prize Winner for Dance Performance from the Institute of Creative Research and Sport Art Academy.  

    She co-edited with Heid Erdrich, Sister Nations: Native American Women Writers on Community, an anthology of poetry and fiction by Indigenous women. Published by the Minnesota Historical Society, it was nominated for an award.  

    In 2007 the Phoenix Symphony commissioned me to write the libretto for Enemy Slayer, A Navajo Oratorio, which made its 2008 world premiere as part of the Phoenix Symphony’s 60th anniversary in collaboration with composer, Mark Grey, sung by Scott Hendricks, baritone, conducted by Michael Christie, the Phoenix Symphony’s Virginia Piper Music Director and with images by Deborah O’Grady. A compact disc recording of Enemy Slayer is on the Naxos classical music label.  Enemy Slayer was part of the Colorado Music Festival in Boulder, Colorado in July 2008 and was also performed by the Salt Lake Choral Artists at the University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah in 2009.

    Tseyi': Deep in the Rock, Reflections on Canyon de Chelly, Stephen E. Strom (photographer), Univ. of Arizona Press

    No Parole Today, West End Press

    When you come to a river

    or lake or pond

     

    one you haven’t met

    you must meet its spirit

     

    place your hand into its belly

    feel the energy

    stroke its power

    caress the life source

    let it run through your hands

    say a prayer

     

    you must meet its spirit

    and it will never steal you

    was what she told us as children

    Meeting the Spirit of Water

    for Glen Tohe

     

    FEATURED POEMS

    More Writings from Laura

    Map Songs of the Sandhill Cranes

     

    in Mexico

    they laid open the maps again

    written for them in the 2nd world

    in blue light spoken with blue voices

    they learned songs that would guide them through all the worlds to come

    songs they placed in the spiral of their throats and called them maps

    in the blue world they danced with Wind

    who liked these feathered beings

    so Wind molded and formed their bodies

    and taught them to ride on its breath

    when the fights and quarrels broke the blue world apart

    the cranes gathered their songs and dances and maps

    and flew towards the stars

    turned their bodies and broke

    through a hole in the sky

    into the Glittering World

    where a grandmother sprinkles corn pollen for their return each year

    in the month of The Eagle's Young they find their way to the river that ribbons

    past cornfields and cottonwood trees

    near the hightway and electric wires

    they are calling me now

    back to the land of the moonshell river

    so I follow their tracks to the water

    I stand in the cold wind

    in awe and humility

    because they have made this journey for me too

    CONTACT

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    Laura Tohe is Diné.  She is TsénahabiÅ‚nii, Sleepy Rock People clan, and born for the Tódich’inii, Bitter Water clan.  She grew up at Crystal, New Mexico near the Chuska Mountains on the Diné homeland. 

     

    Her published books include Making Friends with Water (chapbook); No Parole Today, a book on boarding schools; Sister Nations: Native American Women Writers on Community, co-edited with Heid Erdrich; Tseyí Deep in the Rock, in collaboration with photographer, Stephen Strom; and Code Talker Stories, an oral history book with the remaining Navajo Code Talkers.  The Phoenix Symphony commissioned her to write the libretto for Enemy Slayer, A Navajo Oratorio, which made its 2008 world premiere as part of the Phoenix Symphony’s 60th anniversary.  A compact disc recording of Enemy Slayer is on the Naxos classical music label.  It received rave reviews by the Arizona Republic and was called “a triumph” by Opera Today. 

     

    A poet, writer, and librettist, Tohe's work has been published in such journals as  Ploughshares, New Letters, cream city review, Red Ink, World Literature Today and many others. Her work has appeared in the U.S., Canada, South America and in Europe with French, Dutch and Italian translations.   She has read her poetry internationally in the U.S., Europe, and South America. Laura holds a doctorate degree in creative writing, Indigenous American Literature, and American Literature. 

     

    Laura is Professor with Exemplar Distinction in the English Department at Arizona State University and is an Arizona Speaks presenter for the Arizona Humanities that awarded her the 2006 Dan Schilling Public Scholar award.

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    In 2015 Laura was honored as the Navajo Nation Poet Laureate for 2015-2017, a title given to her in celebration and recognition of her work as a poet and writer.

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