How a photo of dead horses on the Navajo Nation inspired this poetry collection from Jake Skeets

A photo from a few years ago is the inspiration for a new collection of poetry.

Jake Skeets said the image, which showed a number of horses that had died, got him thinking about climate change, and its impacts on the Navajo Nation.

That led to his latest collection, called "Horses." He’ll be talking about it Monday night at Changing Hands Bookstore in Phoenix.

Skeets is the Navajo Nation’s third poet laureate; he joined The Show talk about his newest project.

Full conversation

MARK BRODIE: Jake, tell me about the inspiration here. It sounds like it was something meaningful that happened on the Navajo Nation, is that right?

JAKE SKEETS: That’s right. The book itself really began during the pandemic, and I — and the book itself opens with a poem that’s in response to a rather tragic event that happened on the Navajo Nation in 2018. Nearly 200 feral horses were found dead in a dried-up stock pond. And I was really sort of captivated by that story, so I began this book with that image in mind as I was writing it. Thinking through things like climate change and the ways in which it can be measured by ordinary people like you and me.

MARK BRODIE: What captivated you so much about that situation that led you not only to write about it but to kind of base your new collection on it?

JAKE SKEETS: I’m not sure exactly. I think it was definitely the image of the horses. If you Google it, you can find the images, they’re quite, you know, breathtaking a bit. Not in a good way, of course. ... And, the interesting thing about the these horses is that they were found in a circle, which I thought was such an interesting detail about this particular event. And yeah, I’m not sure exactly why it sort of stayed with me, but ... I meditated on that particular image for quite some time.

MARK BRODIE: How did you try to take the image that you saw and the images that came to you in your mind and put them into words?

JAKE SKEETS: Well, there’s definitely a recursive nature that sort of exists when you’re thinking about just circles in general, the kind of like a cyclical way in which time might move. And when you pair that with a sort of specific Native identity and tradition and history, I felt like horses could also maybe act as a metaphor, and the repetition that sort of is employed throughout the book is the way in which I was maybe echoing, you know, that circular formation of these horses.

MARK BRODIE: How significant of a story was that on the Navajo Nation? Like, was that a big deal for folks living there?

JAKE SKEETS: I don’t think so, honestly. Because the — I didn’t know about the event until 2020, so that was, you know, two years later. So I didn’t even hear about it, I didn’t notice any other type of press around just a few news articles that I found online about it.

In fact, you know, in response, the Navajo Nation, you know, just sprayed the horses in a hydrated lime in order to speed up decomposition and buried the horses on site. So, it’s kind of the, you know, sweeping under the rug in a way. But I feel like that moment or that event really was a kind of stark reminder that there’s climate change is a real thing and that we are — we can see it, we can measure it.

MARK BRODIE: Well so, thinking about that, did that sort of lead you to the rest of the poems in this collection, thinking about climate change and maybe what might have led to these horses’ deaths?

JAKE SKEETS: Yes, yes. So, it was a lot of research in the kind of things or phenomena that are happening specifically in and around the Navajo Nation. And they very much is connected, kind of like in a circle, right? So, these feral horses are, you know, a huge factor in climate change in these Western states that are dealing with drought, right?

Because horses overgraze a lot, and when they graze, they take the plant from the root up. So, what’s left is just, you know, the soil itself, but, you know, wind and flash floods carry away that topsoil, so you’re left with just sand, right, in these Western states. And then sand dune migration is a real thing that’s happening on the Navajo Nation that’s beginning to overtake roads and houses and fences. Again, it’s all connected, in a way.

MARK BRODIE: I wonder if you were thinking of sort of the role of horses not just in climate change as you’re describing, but also kind of like in the role or the image of the West as a whole. Like, horses seem to have kind of this status in this part of the world.

JAKE SKEETS: Definitely. I was thinking of that kind of Western frontier image as I was writing this particular book. I knew that horses carried so much meaning for just the American West in general, but also just for Native people in general as well. The horse as a symbol, the horse as an image is kind of like the symbol for, you know, freedom or strength or, you know, some type of resilience. But in this case, I was really interested in trying to play around with with that idea, and it did inform a lot of my work in the book.

MARK BRODIE: How much do you try to put yourself in poems versus the, the rest of the subject matter you might be writing about?

JAKE SKEETS: I’m really interested in speakers that can be mobile, that sort of can basically travel or traverse large spaces or time zones or ... timetables. And for me specifically, I think in my first two books, there’s sort of like a hint of myself in there, some of it is definitely biographical — autobiographical, I mean. But ... I think there is a distance between the speakers in this book and myself.

MARK BRODIE: Is that a conscious choice?

JAKE SKEETS: Yes, yes, I try to keep myself as the speaker or myself kind of maybe at the periphery as opposed to the center. And yeah, it’s definitely a choice, just to — because I do sort of tend to write about these darker tones or these darker themes. So, I think it’s just also a way of protection for myself, right, of making sure that this — I see this as a sort of a separate thing as opposed to part of my life.

MARK BRODIE: Oh, that’s interesting. So, almost like you’re trying not to — for example, a lot of these poems deal with climate change and things that, you know, are kind of unpleasant, trying not to bring yourself into those kinds of things?

JAKE SKEETS: Yes, so not to put myself at the center, I think. But, of course, what ends up happening is that I always sort of come up and show up in the collections. But I think what readers will generally find out is that there’s no way I can separate them, right?

I might go in wanting to have this sort of clean separation or division, but when I’m throughout the book, the thing that I discover is that I can’t, and I’m hoping that the reader also discovers that, that they also can’t separate themselves. So, that’s why I really put myself as on the periphery because of the journey sort of inward into the collection.

KJZZ's The Show transcripts are created on deadline. This text is edited for length and clarity, and may not be in its final form. The authoritative record of KJZZ's programming is the audio record.

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