We Are Together Now: Notes on the Film Hoktiwe: Two Poems in Ishakkoy

ABSTRACT

Artist and historian of the Atakapa-Ishak Nation, Jeffery Darensbourg's 2020 film with Fernando Lopez features poetry in Ishakkoy, an indigenous language from what is now southwest Louisiana and southeast Texas, composed during an artist residency at A Studio in the Woods. The companion essay shares some of the process of composing creative works in this language, and especially of writing centos, also known as patchwork or collage poems, during COVID-19 sequestration.