Underfoot
AUTHOR
Niillas Holmberg
TRANSLATORS
Jennifer Kwon Dobbs and Johanna Domokos
ILLUSTRATED BY
Inga-Wiktoria Påve
In Underfoot, Holmberg asks what prevents an industrialized nation-state from achieving its desire to extract maximum resources.
His answers are people and their connection with land. Writing in Northern Sámi, he creates a world of symbols to enact the challenges of maintaining an immediate relationship with land in the midst of ongoing settler colonialism and displacement.
Specifically, Underfoot summons readers to return to their feet because that’s where we’re constantly in contact with the ground. The book’s antagonist, the shoemaker, markets comfort and warmth. The moment that we put on the shoe is when we offer ourselves to capitalism and mechanization. That’s when we replace our values of sustainability and communality with egoism and individuality.
The poetry is interwoven with illustrations by Sami artist, Inga-Wiktoria Pave.
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Jennifer Kwon Dobbs is a poet, critic, essayist, and associate professor of creative writing at St. Olaf College. Her books include Paper Pavilion (White Pine Press Poetry Prize 2007), Interrogation Room (White Pine Press 2018), and the chapbooks Notes from a Missing Person (Essay Press 2015) and the German translated Necro Citizens (forthcoming). A recipient of grants from the Metropolitan Regional Arts Council, Minnesota State Arts Board among others, she is currently co-editing an anthology of autocritical writing on kinship. www.jkwondobbs.com.