Cheryl J Fish
Cheryl J. Fish recently pubished her debut novel, OFF THE YOGA MAT, the story of three characters coming of middle age. Fish is a poet and environmental humanities researcher. She has published essays and blog posts on responses to extractivism and climate change by Indigenous Sami filmmakers, artists, and activists in the U.S. and the Americas who engage with ecomedia and various forms of technology to share indigenous perspective and challenge destruction of habitats for human and non-human nature in the wake of climate change and melting ice. Also interested in non-indigenous allies who collaborate with indigenous artists. Fish has also published essays on travel writing and co-edited a collection travel literature by African-Americans Web site: http://www.cheryljfish.com
Address: New York, New York, United States
Address: New York, New York, United States
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My novel follows three characters coming of middle age as the year 2000 (Y2K) approaches: Nate is broke and in his eighth year of graduate school. Nate’s ex-girlfriend Nora finagles a position in Finland where she embraces sisu, the Finnish concept of perseverance, in pursuit of motherhood. And Lulu, Nate’s talented yogi, yearns to get to the bottom of her nightmares of childhood abuse as she returns to her hometown, New Orleans, to care for her ailing mother.
Many times, I thought I was done with Nate, Nora and Lulu. As far as I was concerned, I’d hit on the right combination of character, plot, style, conflict, and tone. But as I re-read it, and received additional feedback from my writing groups and rejections from the outside world, I realized I had not. Years passed and my sense of time wasting felt overwhelming. I put it away, worked on and published stories, poems, scholarly essays, flash fiction, and attended to my demanding teaching job. What also plagued me: jealousy. Other writers found readers. They published their books and won awards. Ironically, my character Nate researches the theme of jealousy through literature and psychology for his doctoral thesis, but claims he never gets personally jealous. What a mighty delusion!
CRATER & TOWER is based on Cheryl J. Fish's experience and research at Mount St. Helens Volcanic National Monument in Washington state in 2010, thirty years after the largest eruption in North America of the 20th Century. She was a writer-in-residence invited to join a group of scientists who measure changes there every five years. At the volcano, she was able to finally write about the traumatic events of September 11, 2001, that she had experienced close hand as a resident, mother, and teacher in Lower Manhattan, but had not been able to process. The two locales form a dialectic in these poems.
(Due to the copyright rules of the publisher, Intellect Journals, I am not at liberty to post the full essay).
It is from the catalog CONTEMPORARY ART FROM SAPMI, Editor Sofia Johansson, Biltmuseet, Umeå University, based on an exhibition presented in 2014. Published 2017.
Cheryl J. Fish's essay focuses on Liselotte Wadstedt's film SAMI DAUGHTER YOIK and Johs Kalvemo's FEAR OF THE BOUNDLESS, two Sami documentaries that consider the meaning of Northern Scandinavian borders, mobility, and Sami identity, blending personal narrative with interrogation of colonialist policies. Surveillance from within and without contributes to the filmmakers' shifts in identity and the quest for indigenous rights and alternative subjectivity. Wajstedt draws on the Sami yoik and the politics of traditional clothing as she explores her repressed Swedish Sami heritage, whereas Kalvemo examines cold-war policies that deem his mobility a threat as he and other Sami leaders are watched by the Norwegian special branch. Both filmmakers stress the necessity of what Gerald Vizenor calls "survivance" using their own objectification to reflect on and challenge narrow definitions of authenticity.
Cheryl J. Fish
VOLCANO MOVES
The volcano moves like a man I know, crater dashed, puffing hot,
riotous in ritual pride. Not only women wait to exhale.
Steamy insinuations…whatever resists eventually shifts.
A mountain is but a figment of your capacity
shadow of your world maker
Registers a giant page of cloud in the misty Pacific Northwest
Slowly clearing, holding you by your elbow
Who were those people at the camp ground?
They helped me blow up my Therma Rest pad and shared cranky cups of
Joe at 6 a.m. Conversation and hikes into the blast zone with its dead logs and
razored honor. Scientists and writers, artists and idiots,
hours of disbelief, mesmerized by beauty gone gonzo.
When we left the U-Fish Tower Rock campground
We spread out across the country recalling
stripes of snow and ash lining Saint Helens’ flank
A man I know moves me like a volcano
how steamy, how stolid
He roars. Back hairy and warm
sudden motion overloads, predicting seismic activity
ashy rationalizations
new flows and flowers
greater depth in mind and manifestation
Yellow alert.
See URL for full text.
My novel follows three characters coming of middle age as the year 2000 (Y2K) approaches: Nate is broke and in his eighth year of graduate school. Nate’s ex-girlfriend Nora finagles a position in Finland where she embraces sisu, the Finnish concept of perseverance, in pursuit of motherhood. And Lulu, Nate’s talented yogi, yearns to get to the bottom of her nightmares of childhood abuse as she returns to her hometown, New Orleans, to care for her ailing mother.
Many times, I thought I was done with Nate, Nora and Lulu. As far as I was concerned, I’d hit on the right combination of character, plot, style, conflict, and tone. But as I re-read it, and received additional feedback from my writing groups and rejections from the outside world, I realized I had not. Years passed and my sense of time wasting felt overwhelming. I put it away, worked on and published stories, poems, scholarly essays, flash fiction, and attended to my demanding teaching job. What also plagued me: jealousy. Other writers found readers. They published their books and won awards. Ironically, my character Nate researches the theme of jealousy through literature and psychology for his doctoral thesis, but claims he never gets personally jealous. What a mighty delusion!
CRATER & TOWER is based on Cheryl J. Fish's experience and research at Mount St. Helens Volcanic National Monument in Washington state in 2010, thirty years after the largest eruption in North America of the 20th Century. She was a writer-in-residence invited to join a group of scientists who measure changes there every five years. At the volcano, she was able to finally write about the traumatic events of September 11, 2001, that she had experienced close hand as a resident, mother, and teacher in Lower Manhattan, but had not been able to process. The two locales form a dialectic in these poems.
(Due to the copyright rules of the publisher, Intellect Journals, I am not at liberty to post the full essay).
It is from the catalog CONTEMPORARY ART FROM SAPMI, Editor Sofia Johansson, Biltmuseet, Umeå University, based on an exhibition presented in 2014. Published 2017.
Cheryl J. Fish's essay focuses on Liselotte Wadstedt's film SAMI DAUGHTER YOIK and Johs Kalvemo's FEAR OF THE BOUNDLESS, two Sami documentaries that consider the meaning of Northern Scandinavian borders, mobility, and Sami identity, blending personal narrative with interrogation of colonialist policies. Surveillance from within and without contributes to the filmmakers' shifts in identity and the quest for indigenous rights and alternative subjectivity. Wajstedt draws on the Sami yoik and the politics of traditional clothing as she explores her repressed Swedish Sami heritage, whereas Kalvemo examines cold-war policies that deem his mobility a threat as he and other Sami leaders are watched by the Norwegian special branch. Both filmmakers stress the necessity of what Gerald Vizenor calls "survivance" using their own objectification to reflect on and challenge narrow definitions of authenticity.
Cheryl J. Fish
VOLCANO MOVES
The volcano moves like a man I know, crater dashed, puffing hot,
riotous in ritual pride. Not only women wait to exhale.
Steamy insinuations…whatever resists eventually shifts.
A mountain is but a figment of your capacity
shadow of your world maker
Registers a giant page of cloud in the misty Pacific Northwest
Slowly clearing, holding you by your elbow
Who were those people at the camp ground?
They helped me blow up my Therma Rest pad and shared cranky cups of
Joe at 6 a.m. Conversation and hikes into the blast zone with its dead logs and
razored honor. Scientists and writers, artists and idiots,
hours of disbelief, mesmerized by beauty gone gonzo.
When we left the U-Fish Tower Rock campground
We spread out across the country recalling
stripes of snow and ash lining Saint Helens’ flank
A man I know moves me like a volcano
how steamy, how stolid
He roars. Back hairy and warm
sudden motion overloads, predicting seismic activity
ashy rationalizations
new flows and flowers
greater depth in mind and manifestation
Yellow alert.
See URL for full text.