Whose Water: Poems by Kim Shuck, $10.00 ISBN 978-1-939301-63-5. 24 pages, 8 ½ by 5 ½ in. staple-bound paper. Cover art by Kim Shuck. Cover and author photos by Doug Salin.                    BUY NOW PAYPAL LINK                               Kim Shuck, Poet Laureate of San Francisco, writes a stunning long poem about her journey across the United States, what becomes a personal migration along its waterways. She names and transforms history, politics, nature’s beings, and her own ties to Cherokee Nation, of which she is an enrolled member. She notices “Selu” (corn in Cherokee), orchards, “dead gas stations,” and “ravens in parking lots.” In the flow of scenes Shuck articulates an identity, “Americans are defined/by crossing water/Atlantic, Mississippi, Rio Grande, Pacific.” Place names of Latin, Spanish, and Algonkian origin wend together. An unanswered question haunts the verse as the poet moves in a terrain of observation and imagination. Readers join Shuck in creating possible responses.

Kim Shuck is a Tsalagi (Cherokee)/Euro-American poet, author, weaver, and beadwork artist born in San Francisco, California. She belongs to the Northern California Cherokee diaspora and is a member of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma. In 2017, Mayor Ed Lee named Shuck as the 7th Poet Laureate of San Francisco.  Other awards include a PEN Oakland Censorship Award, National Laureate Fellowship from the Academy of American Poets, KQED Local Hero Award, American Indian Heritage Month, Mentor of the Year Award from Wordcraft Circle of Native Writers and Storytellers, Native Writers of the Americas First Book, Diane Decorah Award, and a Mary Tallmountain Award. Previous books of poetry are Deer Trails: San Francisco Poet Laureate Series No. 7, (City Lights Publishers), Murdered Missing (Foothills Publishing), Sidewalk Ndn, chapbook (FootHills Publishing), Clouds Running In, (Taurean Horn Press ), Smuggling Cherokee (Greenfield Review Press, Poetry Foundation bestseller list, SPD Books bestseller list. She earned a B.A. in Art (1994), and M.F.A. in Textiles (1998) from San Francisco State University. She has taught American Indian Studies at San Francisco State University and was an artist-in-residence at the de Young Museum in June 2010 with Michael Horse.