
Mountain Man's UseNet Archive TallMountain Awards 1996 San Francisco, 23 Nov 1996
Web Publication by Mountain Man Graphics, Australia in the Southern Spring of 1996

Mountain Man's UseNet Archive

TallMountain Awards 1996

San Francisco, 23 Nov 1996

Web Publication by Mountain Man Graphics, Australia in the Southern Spring of 1996

TallMountain Awards 1996

Date: Fri, 1 Nov 1996 21:42:05 GMT
From: bclarke@igc.apc.org (Ben Clarke)
Newsgroups: apc.indig.info, soc.culture.native, alt.native
Subject: TallMountain Awards 1996 (ceremony in San Francisco, 23 November)

THE TALLMOUNTAIN CIRCLE

A Project of the Tenderloin Reflection and Education Center (TREC)
P.O. Box 423115,Mbr> San Francisco, CA 94142
(510) 535-2020
e-mail address: bclarke@igc.apc.org

Advisory Board:
Paula Gunn Allen
Ben Clarke
Kitty Costello
Judith St. George
Beth Saunders
Yvonne Yarber

November 1, 1996
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

The advisory board of the TallMountain Circle is pleased to announce the 1996 recipients of the Mary TallMountain award for creative writing and community service: Abena Songbird, a Missisquoi Abenaki poet and songwriter from Swanton, Vermont and Kali Grosberg for the Tenderloin Older Writers Network, a group which promotes workshop and publishing opportunities for elders in the Tenderloin district of San Francisco.

The awards ceremony will kick off the Tenderloin Reflection and Education Center's Spirit of the Streets celebration on Saturday, November 23, 1996 at 1 p.m. at 135 Golden Gate Avenue, San Francisco, CA. The public is invited to join us for the awards as well as readings and workshops which will follow.

The awards are part of the TallMountain Circle's goal of supporting those who give voice to the experience of Native Americans and the dispossessed of society. Writers interested in applying for the 1997 awards may write for guidelines from TallMountain Circle. P.O. Box 423115, San Francisco, CA. 94142

Award winners will receive an honorarium of $100-$300 and be featured readers in public events of the TallMountain Circle throughout the year.

The TallMountain Circle produces, promotes and distributes Mary TallMountain's literary works. Established as a project of the Tenderloin Reflection and Education Center (TREC), the Circle carries on the work that Mary TallMountain embodied by supporting those who give voice to the experience of Native Americans and the dispossessed in this society. Each year the Advisory Board selects recipients of the TallMountain Award for Creative Writing and Community Service and conducts public readings of award winners work. All of TallMountain's book length works are distributed by the Circle as well as broadsides, chapbooks and anthologies in which she is prominently featured.

Since her death in September of 1994 the TallMountain Circle has reprinted her 1991 collection A Quick Brush of Wings (Freedom Voices 1991) published the Posthumous collection Listen to the Night (Freedom Voices 1995) and issued a chapbook of previously unpublished poems of Haiku and other poetic forms.

Biographical Information

Mary TallMountain Athabaskan Poet

"Her spirit and her ability to connect the different worlds of her experience
teach us much about how to live our lives properly."

"Her poetry is a permanent testament
to the rich tapestry of experience that was her life."
Bill Moyers

"Mary TallMountain was a poet who listened to the night.
She listened for the voices of ancestors and to dreams.
She knew the whispers of the powerless ones,
the endangered ones, the vanished ones,
and she knew the survivors, too."
Kitty Costello

Mary TallMountain was a Native Alaskan of Koyukon-Athabaskan, Russian and Celtic descent. She was born in Nulato village on the Yukon River in 1918. When her mother contracted tuberculosis, she became the first child in her village ever to be adopted out by an Anglo couple. At age fourteen she moved with her adoptive family to Central California, and did not return to her homeland for more than fifty years. She was a long- time resident of San Francisco, yet the Yukon River colored her mindset early; it provided a rich source for much of her writing and is her "spirit's home." She died on September 2, 1994 in Petaluma, California.

For more than 20 years, TallMountain was active in the Native American literature renaissance. Her poems and stories have been published in dozens of anthologies and periodicals nationwide, including The Language of Life, The Harpers Anthology of Twentieth Century Native American Poetry, The Alaska Quarterly, and Animals Agenda. She read for audiences throughout California and Alaska, and her work is used in teaching Native American Studies at many colleges and universities throughout the United States. In 1989 TallMountain read and was interviewed by Bill Moyers for his PBS poetry series called The Power of the Word.

Her work has been collected in book form in The Light on the Tent Wall, (UCLA Press, 1990) and A Quick Brush of Wings (Freedom Voices, 1991) as well as the posthumous collection Listen To the Night (Freedom Voices, 1995). The Rasmussen Library at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks houses an archival collection of TallMountain's published and unpublished works. Mary TallMountain was a powerful presence in the Tenderloin community of San Francisco. She was Poet-in-Residence at the Tenderloin Reflection and Education Center (TREC) and for many years published a column called "Meditations for Wayfarers" in the Franciscan publication The Way.

To receive a copy of the TallMountain Circle merchandise catalogue, please contact Ben Clarke (bclarke@igc.apc.org) or write to the TallMountain Circle at the postal address given at the beginning of this article.

Ben Clarke

E-Mail to: bclarke@igc.apc.org