Native American poetry with Justine Chan

Dhr. Seven, Ananda (Dharma Buddhist Meditation), Xochitl (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

The Firehouse (@thefirehousejt)

In the spring as Beth Upton's Joshua Tree meditation retreat was winding down at Dhamma Dena, we realized that civilization was not that far away. On one side there are the Joshua Tree Festival Grounds by the dry lake (home of BhaktiFest). On the other is an odd building with big doors. It's an oasis of culture in the high desert called The Firehouse, a performance space where a firehouse used to be. Justine Chan was reading.

Should You Lose All Reason(s) by poet and Zion National Park Ranger Justine Chan (justinechan.com) is at times scorching, at times brimming with awe and desire. Her topic? Coyote-centric Southern Paiute tribe folktales.

• Indigenous peoples of the Great Basin

This debut book of poems resonates with a brilliance, retelling ancient Native narratives, handed down for generations as American Indians explained the natural world to themselves.

Everyone was striving for jhana with Upton.

Seattle resident Justine Chan worked as a park ranger at Zion National Park, where she was very moved by the native flora, fauna, and culture. As the only Asian American ranger at Zion, she chose to retell a Southern Paiute Native American folktale for her weekly evening program on coyotes.

The more that long, hot summer unfolded, the more time she spent alone in the desert, the more she retold the story, the more the story became her life.

In that mental space, she began to write. Should You Lose All Reason(s) is unafraid of looking hard -- back, down, towards, around, forward, at the stories we tell, at herself, at the desert, at the sun, at everything.

Forty days in, we breathed, and the pic snapped.

In conversation with that ancient Southern Paiute folktale handed down through the generations, she weaves together a triptych of poems, works both always on the move and stuck, exile in the wilderness.

Drawing from her experiences serving in AmeriCorps, working many summers as a park ranger, and traveling across the United States, she explores race, loneliness, stories, hauntings, family, landscapes and cityscapes, climate change, survival, music, resilience, the West, and America itself. More

Park ranger poet Justine Chan

ABOUT: Justine Chan is a writer, poet, and singer-songwriter from Chicago, who currently lives in Seattle. Should You Lose All Reason(s) (Chin Music Press, 2023) is her initial release. Her work has appeared in Baltimore Review, Beecher’s, Booth, Poetry on Buses, and Midwestern Gothic, among others. She holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of Washington and has worked many seasons as a park ranger with the National Park Service.

• Should You Lose All Reason(s) | Justine Chan