news | Friday April 17, 2015

Book Review: Peace in Duress in Transmotion academic journal

Transmotion, a new academic journal with a Native American and First Nations focus, has published in its first issue (Vol. 1, No. 1) a review of Janet Rogers’s latest collection of poetry, Peace in Duress (Talon, 2014). Patricia Killelea of the University of California, Davis authored the review. Read extracts from Rogers’s poems in the full review online, and enjoy the below quoted portions of the review:

… hers is a powerful, edgy voice that simultaneously thunders and soothes, aggravates and celebrates – sometimes in the very same breath. Hers is a voice that thunders as it demands political change … Whether she is taking aim at attacks on the land and tribal sovereignty, or rejoicing in a kiss or other act of human kindness, Peace in Duress is overflowing with the spirit of resistance to confining notions of both poetry and indigeneity. … Rogers is a poet-warrior writing from the trenches, bearing witness to the epidemic of disappeared First Nations women … But Peace in Duress is far more than a catalogue of violence against peoples and the earth, for … these are also pages filled with sensuality and love. … a collection centered on (re)balancing and forging connections even in the midst of so much disruption and disconnection. … Rogers as an artist is a master of echoes, both on the page and in performance, where her poems talk back to the listener/reader as well as to each other, and necessary visions retrace their steps, audibly stumbling into one another again and again.

In these ways, Janet Rogers’s Peace in Duress and her accompanying spoken performances on SoundCloud come together to form a sonic tour-de-force of contemporary indigenous resistance. They will appeal to readers and listeners interested in works that are both experimental and at the same time accessible, as well as audiences eager to engage narratives of survival, resistance, and strength from an unwavering voice that isn’t afraid to speak the truth no matter the cost.