Description

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A collection of poems illustrating the cultural and familial experiences of a Chickasaw woman

For Rebecca Hatcher Travis, writing a book of poems is similar to growing a pecan tree. Both take a long time to develop. For the poems in this exquisite collection, "the seeds were planted in childhood and earth, and blossomed with family and love." Hatcher Travis bases her poems on memories of her Chickasaw family and the Oklahoma landscapes surrounding her as a child. The poems also are testimonies to the ancestors who have passed on to the next life.

Featuring the poem Picked Apart the Bones, which won the First Book Award for Poetry from the Native Writers' Circle of the Americas.

About the Author

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Rebecca Hatcher Travis is a citizen of the Chickasaw Nation whose roots are deep in Indian Territory, Oklahoma, and Texas. Her poetry manuscript, Picked Apart the Bones, won the First Book Award from the Native Writers' Circle of the Americas in 2006 and was published in 2008 by Chickasaw Press. Her work has also appeared in literary journals, anthologies, online, and recently in Tending the Fire: Native Voices and Portraits, a collection of pieces by and photographs of Native poets and writers, published in 2017 by University of New Mexico Press. Travis is a member of the Wordcraft Circle of Native Writers and Storytellers. She lives in the foothills of the Arbuckle Mountains in southern Oklahoma, near the land her ancestors settled in early Indian Territory days. She continues to write and give readings at several venues near her home.