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Area of FocusAbout Layli's Work
Layli Long Soldier is a poet illustrating how language can be a tool of oppression or a means to reshape ourselves and the world around us. Across her widely experimental, yet accessible, body of work, Long Soldier interrogates the colonial violence inflicted on Native Americans. At the same time, she celebrates the beauty, love, and resilience passed down through generations and communities by way of care and tradition.
In her collection Whereas (2017), Long Soldier uses a variety of poetic forms and textual manipulations that draw attention to the materiality of language: words arranged into geometric shapes, crossed out text, blank spaces, words for punctuation written out in place of punctuation marks. In many poems, she quotes, revises, and repurposes text from congressional statements, newspaper articles, and historical studies, unmasking acts of violence, theft, and erasure that legalistic and sanitized language obscures. For example, the prose poem “38” ponders the role of language in the hanging of 38 Dakota men in 1862 after the so-called Sioux uprising. The poem clarifies that the uprising occurred as the Dakota People were starving after a series of opaque treaties—forged and repeatedly broken by the U.S. government—took their land and livelihood. The centerpiece of Whereas is the titular poem, in which Long Solider responds to the 2009 Congressional Resolution of Apology to Native Americans. She juxtaposes the impersonal legalese of the text with Lakota traditions and cultural teachings, revealing the continued conflict between two opposing worldviews.
Long Soldier also has created several works that present poetry in visual media such as sculpture and video. For example, Long Soldier’s Obligations series of poems began as a hanging sculptural piece. The sculpture emulates a Lakota star quilt, with each diamond-shaped point of the star containing a poem from the series. The words of each poem can be read in multiple directions, creating many different iterations; likewise, the points of the star can be rearranged within the star configuration, adding new dimensions to the poems’ consideration of what we owe each other and how to remain in relationship with one another. The Obligations series will appear in printed form in Long Soldier’s forthcoming collection, We (October 2026). Through her eclectic body of work, Long Soldier demonstrates the power of poetry to articulate our past and build a better future.
