Nathan Erwin is a poet and land-based organizer from the Allegheny Plateau, the northernmost tier of Appalachia.
He currently operates with the Pocasset Wampanoag tribe as they fight for land, food, & seed sovereignty.
His writing has appeared in the North American Review, Denver Quarterly, Waxwing, Boulevard, Booth, The Maine Review, Terrain.org, Hunger Mountain Review, Puerto del Sol, Poetry Wales, The Malahat Review, Ninth Letter, The Bombay Gin, and elsewhere. Work is forthcoming in the New Orleans Review.
His poem "Rematriation as an Answer to Violence" won the Maine Review Environs Prize, judged by Dr. Craig Santos Perez.
His organizing and his poetry are conversant, and so he writes about foodways, myths, medicine, and wanting.
Shale strata — Allegheny Plateau
Nathan Erwin
Current Locations
Current Areas of Work
For inquiries regarding poetry, readings, or organizing
>REACH_OUTResponse time: variable. I am often in the field.
Publication History
"Genetic Erosion" and "My Mother is Singing Her Seed Song"
"November"
"The Fox Sisters Commune with the Ghost of Accidental Overdose I"
"Poem with a .12 Gauge in it"
"Poem with a .12 Gauge in it" and "Elderways Farm"
"The Fox Sisters Commune with the Ghost of Virtue" and "Steuben Folktale: The Man Who Forgot His Name and the Alleghany Death Cat"
"A Dream of Tracking"
"Canada Way Creek"
"Bonfire Rain"
"Rematriation as an Answer to Violence"
"The Land Unfolds"
"A Poem for Finca Luna Búho"
"Another Poem for Finca Luna Búho"
"Buttermilk Falls"
"The Susquehanna Speaks"
"My Uncle in his Rest in Peace Rush Limbaugh Hat"
"Envelope Poem"
"The Borders of Appalachia are Shifting"
"Acid for Two" and "Longing"
"A Dream of Salamanders"
"Two Memories Accompanying a Drowning" and "True Birth"
"Liam Remembers a Chautauqua Ridge"
"Yellow-spotted Salamander"
"Text Messages from my Mother"
"Text Messages from my Mother"
"Last Dream"
"The Finger Lakes"
"Kiss"
"A Dream of Prison"
"A Dream of Salamanders"
"Another Dream of Prison"
"Water Passing Over Stones"
"Corning, NY"
"Trick"
"On Revolution"
"Our son is born on the coldest morning of the year"
"Snow—"
"Creation Myth as Appalachian Landscape" and "Overdose Deaths of Five Children with Images & Phrases from Shakespeare's Sonnets"
"The Chemung on Midwinter's Eve"
"Offering"
"Chautauqua County Detox"
"Abscission" and "Forage"
"Cicada"
"A Trans Landscape Elegy" and "Creation Story"
"re/VIEW: Billy Collins"
"Curriculum on Converting Joy"
"Like the Cuyahoga before it caught fire"
"re/VIEW: Nikki Giovanni"
"To an Organizer"
"A Little Love Poem on a Little Love Poem"
"I put her cat down with a .22"
"Field"
"Notes From the Farm" and "M. Frank Erwin"
"The Way Out Is In"
"A Dairy Crisis"
"To Ashley"
"Ode to Third Graders"