For over six decades, 92Y’s Discovery Poetry Contest has introduced exceptionally gifted young poets to a large audience early in their careers — including John Ashbery, Lucille Clifton, Mark Strand, Larry Levis, and Solmaz Sharif, to name but a few. This year, final contest judges Rick Barot, Mónica de la Torre, and Patricia Spears Jones selected four winning poets — Alexandra Zukerman, Kenzie Allen, Ina Cariño, and Mag Gabbert. Each receives a reading at 92Y, publication in The Paris Review Daily, a stay at the Ace Hotel in Manhattan and $500.
We’ve been chatting with each of the four 2021 Discovery Poetry Contest winners ahead of their reading on October 22. This week, in the last conversation in our series, Kenzie Allen tells us about finding poetry in community, looking for joy in Indigenous ancestry in her poem “Quiet as Thunderbolts,” and more.
Where were you when you found out that you were a winner of the 2021 Discovery Poetry Contest? How did you initially react? How did you celebrate?
I must have been wandering around my house in Toronto, having just accidentally pressed the power button on my phone right when Sophie Herron called. I now have this lovely voicemail from Sophie as a nice memory. When I called back (shaking!), they said, “I think you know what I’m calling about,” and I said “I think I do… but could you say it?” Because it was unbelievable to me.
I’d been sending work to the contest for a few years now, and I’ve always loved reading the work of the winners. And I’ve appreciated the care and community that goes into this endeavor, and into the work at 92Y. So, this was the best thing. The best news. Especially so, to get to work with Ricardo and Sophie, who are such awesome cheerleaders.
Mercifully, my partner was home to calm me down once I got off the phone. Later on, we dressed up and had a cheese-plate in the backyard — our own little private party amid lockdown.
At what point in your life did you know that you were poet? Was there a particular moment, an innate experience of language, a slow realization over a long period of time, or something else entirely?
I think about poetry and I think about music, which has always been a powerful force in my life. My grandmother was an opera singer, and my own Oneida name means “She plays music as she goes.” And I think musicality is the way I relate to language across mediums. I remember writing some really terrible poetry in high school. Later, a friend turned me on to Stephen Dunn’s “The Waiting,” and Pattiann Rogers’ “The Question of Affection” and I fell in love with poetry as a reading experience. It took longer to work out the idea of my being a poet. But I
started trying to find ways to say the things that I needed to be able to name or render, or to celebrate the ordinary moments in a music that befits them.
You’ll be reading your poems at 92Y in the fall with this year’s other Discovery winners. What have you missed most about live poetry readings during the pandemic?
Like any language, poetry lives in community. Any power it has will be gained through connection — and at a poetry reading, you get to see that happening in real time. When I lived in Norway, I had the opportunity to attend monthly Poetry Nights at the local café. That’s where I really learned about poetry’s capacity for building community, and for giving voice to so many different experiences, and the immediate impact that can have when read aloud. Those gatherings slowed down leading into the pandemic, and I’ve missed getting to listen to the rhythms, the breath and its embodiment, milling about afterward in a warm daze, taking joy in each other… truly, I can’t wait to hear how the other Discovery Prize poets voice their words, forging those connections.
Tell us a bit about "Quiet as Thunderbolts," published in the Paris Review Daily along with poems by this year's other Discovery winners. When and where did you write it? What inspired it? What went into its composition that might not be apparent to a reader encountering it for the very first time?
I wrote the piece back in Norway several years ago. I was thinking back on my identity, and the way I somewhat grew into myself. And how I stick out a bit strangely in some of the places I’ve lived.
The original title of the piece was “No More Quiet Indian, Only Thunderbolts.” I decided to go with the current title because I’ve made a conscious effort in the last few years since the poem was written to start looking further at joy and celebration in the parts of my work which speak to Indigenous inheritances.
I didn’t speak as much about my identity when I was younger. My Oneida family has been affected by assimilation, from the boarding schools to today, and while my family never let me forget who we were, when I would leave the house as a child I was inundated by stereotypes and negativity. Those who knew me when I was younger might even be surprised by a poem, or a claim, such as this one, which is the impetus for the piece. “I kept it from you like a kill” — it’s a tender spot, takes trust, to share these things. It took a long time for me to find that trust enough to offer it here.
As I grew into myself, and particularly as I gained the language to start describing my own identity and experiences, my voice grew stronger. I wanted to say “no more” to silence, and also to the idea of a singular portrayal of “Indianness.” The poem travels just as my family has, just as I do — to Lisbon, to an ironing board on the sidewalk in NYC, to Norway where the scent of the sweetgrass I’ve brought with me always carries me back to our reservation in Wisconsin. No matter where I am, I’m still Oneida there, too.
What do you think can happen in a poem that can’t in any other form of literature? What makes poetry special or vital to you?
In a poem, I can complicate and honor the world around me. And I can ask language to do things I haven’t been able to describe or name otherwise. In poetry, we can all be led by forces beyond strict reason, if we leave ourselves open for that surprise. It’s a different mode of understanding. We can move through many landscapes in the space of a breath in a poem. It’s like the opposite of compartmentalizing. What I love about poetry is the wholeness it affords.
Don’t miss Kenzie Allen’s reading with her fellow Discovery Poetry Contest winners from 2021 and 2020 at 92Y on October 22. This contest is endowed by Joan L. and Dr. Julius H. Jacobson, II.