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Two Kamiak Butte Poems
"While I was editing the stills of the video
I accidently noticed that her shadows were shapeshifting and I found inspiration in that, her smooth movements, shadows, and reclaiming animals, culture, and belief through stories."
- Julian Ankney, email to Linda Russo
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The focus on shadows came as a surprise to both poets and begs the question: when shadows speak, who speaks? What do they say? And who listens?
"SEE TRANSLATION" by Julian Ankney and "Shadow : Holdings" by Linda Russo were created separately but alongside each other in response to what Julian called the "shapeshifting" shadows that appear in Hannah Levy's choreographed landscape dance, "Staying with the Pause." Together, the poems tell distinct stories through a shared shadow vocabulary both found in stills taken from Levy's performance on Kamiak Butte, a Whitman County Park named for Spokane Chief Kamiaken and an important cultural site for the Nimíipuu (Nez Perce) people due to the native plant communities that thrive in the large swaths of prairie on its southern slopes. Each piece reflects the collaborator's relation to this land: Ankney's, as Nimíipuu, and Russo's, as a descendent of 19th-century European immigrants.