The the Gravel Lot That Was Montana

The Gravel Lot that was Montana is a collection of poems that acts as a meditation on migration and place through the viewpoint of a contemporary Lenape speaker. It explores the physical and emotional spaces of contemporary southern Three Fires Territory and contemporary Montana. There is a strong Indigenous aspect to the collection as the narrator uses the movement of the Apsaaalooke from the southern shores of Lake Erie to their contemporary home of southern Montana as mirror to the narrator’s movement from the Windsor-Detroit area to western Montana. Individual pieces in the collection insert traditional Lenape worldview to the contemporary world as well as illustrate the experiences of an urban Indigenous person. Picks up and moves through familiar portions of early twenty-first century Turtle Island to discuss the manner in which we move upon the earth and relate to those that share it with us. As a whole the collection becomes a meditation on migration and movement and how those come to create identity as well as how one gains a foothold, emotionally, in a landscape that is not one’s ancestral home.