Lawson Fusao Inada | “Healing Gila”

In this week's episode of the Get Lit Minute, your weekly poetry podcast, we spotlight the life and work of poet, Lawson Fusao Inada. A third-generation Japanese American, his collections of poetry are Before the War: Poems as They Happened (1971); Legends from Camp (1992), winner of the American Book Award; Just Into/Nations (1996); and Drawing the Line (1997). Both jazz and the experience of internment are influences in Inada’s writing. The section titles of his Legends from Camp reveal these ongoing concerns: Camp, Fresno, Jazz, Oregon, and Performance. Inada edited the anthology Only What We Carry: The Japanese Internment Experience (2000), a major contribution to the record of the Japanese American experience. He narrated the PBS documentaries Children of the Camps and Conscience and Constitution and is featured in the video What It Means to Be Free: A Video About Poetry and Japanese American Internment and the animated film Legends from Camp, made with his son Miles Inada. One of his poems is inscribed on a stone at the Japanese American Historical Plaza in Portland, Oregon. Source

This episode includes a reading of his poem, “Healing Gila”.  You can find more poems like this in our Get Lit Anthology at www.getlitanthology.org .

“Healing Gila”

     for The People

The people don't mention it much.

It goes without saying,

it stays without saying—

that concentration camp

on their reservation.

And they avoid that massive site

as they avoid contamination—

that massive void

punctuated by crusted nails,

punctured pipes, crumbled

failings of foundations . . .

What else is there to say?

This was a lush land once,

graced by a gifted people

gifted with the wisdom

of rivers, seasons, irrigation.

The waters went flowing

through a network of canals

in the delicate workings

of balances and health . . .

What else is there to say?

Then came the nation.

Then came the death.

Then came the desert.

Then came the camp.

But the desert is not deserted.

It goes without saying,

it stays without saying—

wind, spirits, tumbleweeds, pain.

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