Introducing “Dancing to the Ticking of the Doomsday Clock by Rena Priest.”

Introducing “Dancing to the Ticking of the Doomsday Clock by Rena Priest”– a poetry collection for our precarious times that plays love, hope, and optimism against the harsh realities of the climate crisis, extinction, and histories of oppression. With dark humor and deftly executed tangents, readers embark on a poignant journey, oscillating between moments of joy and sorrow.

Priest wields poetic self-empowerment to unmask the shadows of white power structures that often silence or appropriate Indigenous voices. This collection is for both poets and non-poets, Indigenous and non-Indigenous alike, offering profound insights and emotional resonance.

Rena Priest is a member of the Lhaq’temish (Lummi) Nation. She served as Washington State's 6th Poet Laureate (2021-2023) and is the author of three books and two anthologies. She has received fellowships from the Academy of American Poets, Indigenous Nations Poets, and University of Washington Libraries. Her work appears in Poetry Magazine, Yellow Medicine Review, Poetry Northwest, Poets.org and elsewhere. She holds an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College. Learn more at renapriest.com

Snap your fingers, move your hips, step high, then low, then turn around. Keep the rhythm. It all matters. We are all keeping time and so are the trees, the waters, the earth, just a different kind of time than the Doomsday Clock. Rena Priest’s new collection of poetry provides wisdom, humor, and the right words to accompany us in this spiral of becoming through this age of hyper contradictions. Her compassion is contagious. You will need this book to help make it through to the next dance.