In her first ever festival appearance, Pulitzer Prize winning poet Natalie Diaz discusses her collected works to date, the connection between writing and experience, and the revitalisation of Indigenous language.

In When My Brother Was an Aztec, Diaz shined a spotlight on the particularities of family dynamics, exploring a sister’s struggle with a brother’s addiction, a father’s undying dedication to his son, and a son stealing the family’s lightbulbs. With appearances from Antigone, Houdini, Huitzilopochtli, and even Jesus, this debut collection was an exciting introduction to her humorous, heartfelt, and sensual style. With her second collection, Postcolonial Love Poem, which won the 2021 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry, Diaz railed against the violence of erasure, positioning the bodies of Indigenous, Latinx, black, and brown women as both body politic and body ecstatic. Her demand that all bodies be held as sacred – whether a body of language or a body of water – echoed with grief, love, and joy.

In conversation with fellow poet Annemarie Ní Churreáin, she’ll discuss both collections and the cultural history that underpins much of her work.

Natalie Diaz is Mojave and an enrolled member of the Gila River Indian Tribe (Akimel O’odham). She is the recipient of a Pulitzer Prize in Poetry, a Publishing Triangle Award and an American Book Award. In 2021, Diaz was elected a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets and was a finalist for the Neustadt International Prize for Literature.

Annemarie Ní Churreáin is the poetry editor at The Stinging Fly. Her work includes Bloodroot, Town, and The Poison Glen.

Presented in partnership with Poetry Ireland.