Dana Henry Martin

Get Your Lit On at Tulsa LitFest

Here’s what’s going on at my Tulsa LitFest Book Fair table: a triple-billing of my work, Durell Carter’s work, and work by authors at Moon in the Rye Press. I’ll also have information about Nine Mile Press’s Propel Disability Poetry Book Series, where my full-length collection, Crude—which is largely set in Oklahoma—will be published next summer.

Come say howdy to Durell, me, and more than 50 other authors and publishers.

Tulsa LitFest 2026 Book Fair
Sunday, April 26, 11 a.m.–2 p.m.
OSU Tulsa Campus Mail Hall
700 North Greenwood Avenue
Tulsa, Oklahoma 74106

Images: 1. A sign for my collection, No Sea Here. 2. A sign for Durell Carter’s collection, Mr. Monday Morning’s Broken Songs and Testimonies. 3. A sign for Moon in the Rye Press.

Boldface

The new Netflix documentary series, Trust Me: The False Prophet, details the story of Samuel Bateman, a man who committed horrific abuses in his attempts to claim he was the new FLDS prophet in Short Creek, located on the Utah-Arizona border, after Warren Jeffs was imprisoned.

Short Creek is thirty minutes from where I live. Its members girdle us, especially since Jeffs’ forced exit necessitated that many of his followers relocate to the surrounding communities.

In 2022, The Salt Lake Tribune ran a series of stories about Bateman in which he says some of the most vile things I’ve ever seen in print. Bateman and his actions shook my own childhood traumas loose and made me feel extremely unsafe in this community, or at least with that subset of the community.

My forthcoming book, Crude (Nine Mile Press, Propel Disability Poetry Book Series) discusses Bateman. In “Litany in Which I Talk About My Horse,” I tell my childhood friend Ruthie about the girls Bateman was hauling around a four-state area in a trailer to “recruit” male followers. He was caught in Arizona when a driver spotted something suspicious about his trailer and called the police. Inside it were just some of the girls he’d married and was trafficking. (Even more disturbingly, he also tried to marry his biological daughter, whom he felt called to wed while she was still a child. Yes, you read that sentence right. The documentary series leaves that part out.)

Below is an excerpt from my poem, which is seven pages long. I wrote it the night before my cardiac ablation when I thought I was going to die. It’s after Richard Siken’s “Litany in Which Certain Things Are Crossed Out.”

Completing “Litany in Which I Talk About My Horse” marked the moment Crude became Crude, even though I started writing Crude in 2009. It was also the moment I decided to come back to poetry after a seven-year absence. That day was November 28, 2022. 

I sent the poem to four poets I trusted that night before I went to sleep. I wanted them to have it in case I died while sleeping or during the procedure the next morning. This may seem like high drama, but I had five types of heart issues at the time, all from or exacerbated by post-viral sequelae, symptoms that linger long after the infection itself. For months, my doctors refused to believe any of these issues were serious, even though it felt like wild horses were stampeding in my chest day and night. My heart seemed hell-bent on trampling me to death.

It was in that state of physical and mental anguish that I finished “Litany in Which I Talk About My Horse.” I was responding quite literally to my heart and also to the fact that someone had just described me as riding into Southern Utah on a high horse, as if I were just some snob whose past wasn’t bruised, brutal, and bloody at times.

As it turned out, one of my issues was atrial fibrillation, which is quite serious. The other was postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome, which hadn’t been diagnosed or treated yet and was causing a suite of severe symptoms like debilitating dizziness and vomiting. I sometimes had to crawl from room to room. Folks with dysautonomia know what I’m talking about.

Kelly Boyker was one of the poets I sent “Litany” to that night. She had a profound reaction to it, which strengthened my resolve to return to poetry. (Ad astra, dear Kelly.) My version of the poem doesn’t cross anything out. It sets atrocities in boldface. These are the lines about Ruthie’s father and Samuel Bateman:

              I’m sorry I did that to you, made that anger in him by speaking Latin,
                                  made him use you for supplication …
              later, in your room, in your bed, your own bed. If the window
                     were a heart, it would always be open not closed

              like the box trailer
                       found in Utah. It was full of girls. One wedged her fingers
                                                                                                                       over
                                            the right door. I thought of you but not of me. It’s what
              I do, Ruthie. It’s what I do.

—

Like I’ve said, Crude isn’t just about Oklahoma. Those same patterns repeat everywhere, including places like Utah. Folks should check out Trust Me: The False Prophet if they have the stomach for it. I barely made it through the series and don’t have the luxury of viewing it as a tragedy that unfolded a world away. This atrocity played out right here: first with Jeffs, and then with Bateman.

Image: My photo taken in Zion National Park outside Springdale, Utah, about thirty minutes from Short Creek.

‘Crude’ Publication Announcement

I’m thrilled to announce that I signed a contract with Nine Mile Press today. My collection, Crude, will be part of the Propel Disability Poetry Book Series and will be available in June 2027.

I’m also stepping into a contributing editor role for the series. Between the authors, editors, and founder Steve Kuusisto, Propel is doing phenomenal work around poetry and disability poetics.

This series matters deeply to me. Crude could not have found a better home.

Image: A screenshot of the masthead for the Propel Disability Poetry Book Series from Nine Mile Books.

Water Cracking Air

Happy Trans Day of (Indi)Visibility.

I just saw an ad that read: Turn Your Expertise into Jerome. I was like, Who is Jerome? It actually said Income, but I’m dyslexic and the font was swashy.

The yellow-throated warbler is the happiest of all warblers, and I will fight anyone who says otherwise.

I put a bird in a box
so it wouldn’t be hurt
by the wind

I put myself in the wind
so I wouldn’t be hurt
by the box

—

Inspired by an Oklahoman who put a native sparrow in a box on a windy day because she thought the wind would harm the bird.

I dreamed Bill Knott’s mind had been transferred to millions of pieces of paper. They were lying all around me in a vast room, each one folded like an origami prayer boat meant for a memorial ceremony, but there was no water anywhere on Earth for them to float in.

(ツ)_/¯ I guarantee my reasons for not liking our former sheriff are very different from our local alt-right extremists’ reasons for not liking the former sheriff. ¯\_(ツ)

This public speaker was being interviewed, and he kept saying co-creation, but I heard it as procreation. Imagine my confusion when he said he wanted to co-create with his partner, his co-workers, his friends, his family, and his children.

I’m doing the floss this morning along with a little song I wrote called “Our Shitty Fucking Sheriff Resigned” because our county’s shitty fucking sheriff resigned suddenly and without explanation. I had several frustrating interactions with him when I was dealing with complex PTSD and bipolar issues in 2023. He was unhelpful, clueless, patronizing, and demeaning.

Our shitty fucking sheriff resigned. Our shitty fucking sheriff resigned. Sing it with me now.

Oh, and he resigned on International Bipolar Day. Even better. What a gift. How thoughtful of him. And all I got him in return was this victory dance.

Someone from my weaving group is getting rid of four styrofoam heads, so Styrofoam Heads keeps showing up in my inbox. It’s weird. I love it.

Our little town has gathered to watch a rattlesnake climb the wall of a neighbor’s house. It feels like very olden-times entertainment. The life partner is down there with everybody. I am here with myself confronting the snake that is automated AI results embedded in the Yahoo search that’s somehow made itself my preferred search engine.

Evening, a sun-drenched power line is a whip of water cracking the air.

I just misread breaking news as heartbreaking news, and that should be what all breaking news is called these days.

I’m rage-eating gummy bears is how I am.

I’m threatening my nasal cavity with a neti pot is how I am.

Based on my last couple of Facebook posts, people appear to like poetry thirty-five percent more than they like bacon.

I just misread a beacon of hope as a bacon of hope is how I am.

I ate bread in the shower is how I am.

These days, getting to the end of a roll of toilet paper is exciting. I’m like, achievement unlocked. I literally say that.

I had to buy bigger underwear is how I am.

As an Oklahoman, I want to apologize for Markwayne Mullin.

I am dyslexia strong.

Book title, free for the taking: Plastination.

It could deal with the literal plastination of the body or the figurative turning of a country into something as caustic and inorganic as plastic.

I just misread donor organ as donor orgasm is how I am.

Oklahoma is like one of those relationships you just keep finding yourself in again.

If I didn’t have a spine, I would feel like I was one with everything. It’s this skeleton that makes me feel like a soul clinging to bone, something separate from, not part of, something that will one day break.

You know that feeling when you suddenly have to poop right after you take a shower? That’s how Monday feels.

Alex LaMorie

Poems may be forgotten, but they shouldn’t start out as forgettable.

My history is a burning history in a burning world.

If you don’t care about Oklahoma after reading my work about Oklahoma, then I haven’t done my job as a poet, as an Oklahoman, or as a storyteller.

It’s so windy here in Toquerville that I feel like I’m in Béla Tarr’s The Turin Horse. Wind like this makes me cry. It is whatever my mind is, as Gertrude Stein observes. I am as my land and air is, as my cracking and straining house is, as raw as I felt the moment this wind hit my back in a dream and stripped the veneer of reason from me in one clean and somehow profound motion. I sit in the dark shaking, my heart beating like a wild nestling’s.

Something good happened and I can’t talk about it so I’m just eating a bunch of gummy bears is how I am.

Whenever I have something I want to tell the life partner, he’s like, Is it about gender or poetry or trauma, and it almost always is about one or more of those things.

Systemic issues don’t have individual solutions and can’t be offloaded to individuals who must then bear the burden for the systemic issues. We can’t self-love our way out of abusive, harmful systems or the attitudes they encourage and reward.

Some folks drive like they have donor organs in their cars.

What are these words, even?

Me looking at my own writing.

I worked on the new manuscript more today. Loved it. Hated it. Loved it. Hated it. Loved it. Hated it. Loved it. Hated it. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

What do you do when you have two manuscripts with presses for their contests and open reading periods? You finish a third one and send it out, too. That’s what you do.

Every time someone attacks me, I just eat dark, leafy greens and grow stronger.

I’m placing a bowl heaped with disco balls in the light and leaning over them, my face cracked across a thousand mirrors, is how I am.

My neighbor is killing weeds with a blowtorch connected to a propane tank.

Flirting with the life partner by showing him my new spreadsheet is how I am.

I smell like barf for some reason is how I am.

I got immunoglobulins all over myself today doing my immunoglobulin infusion is how I am.

I fell into an agave twice after thinking Don’t lose your balance and fall into that agave is how I am.

‘No Sea Here’ Is Here

My chapbook No Sea Here is finally here, thanks to Moon in the Rye Press, Lisa Bickmore and Jem Ashton, and funding by the Utah Division of Arts and Museums.

I received fifty copies as part of this micropress project and plan to give those to folks who have already generously shared their work with me, who have helped with the collection, and who have, dare I say it, made me a better poet and person.

After the first fifty copies are gone, I’ll have additional copies available that I purchased at a discount. For those, I’ll use a pay-what-you-can model to help offset my costs, including postage, while also making sure anyone who wants a copy can have one. If there are any profits, I’ll donate them to a social or literary nonprofit.

Images: 1. No Sea Here in the afternoon light. 2. An interior page from the collection. 3. Fanned-out copies of No Sea Here. 4. The back cover of the collection with the Moon in the Rye Press logo.

Spring in Salt Lake City

Spring in Salt Lake City and my collection No Sea Here from Moon in the Rye Press in hand.

Images: 1. Lisa Bickmore giving me my copies of No Sea Here in Salt Lake City. 2. Along the Jordan River Trail near South Jordan, Utah. 3. Another view along the Jordan River Trail. 4. The life partner, Lexi, and me at Gardner Village in Midvale, Utah.

Scattering Light

My manuscript Crude was shortlisted for the Lightscatter Press Book Award, judged this year by Heid E. Erdrich.

I’m from Oklahoma. Crude is set largely in that state. The work deals with issues related to trauma, healing, and the formation (and destruction) of identity through places and what happens in them. The word crude functions in several ways in the manuscript. It captures what is raw and coarse and also speaks to the oil industry, which informed so many people’s lives in Oklahoma through the 1980s, including my family’s.

Things like the Dust Bowl, the Great Depression, and the oil boom (and subsequent bust) may seem like forever ago and like they have nothing to do with your story. But Crude is where we were and where still are, all of us. We are all hurting in one way or another in this crude country and this crude world. We are all healing in this crude world, too. Or trying to.

We’ve survived, my kin and me, the unthinkable, the unimaginable, the unsurvivable. Surviving the impossible is possible. That’s my story. It’s that I’m still here and so are you.

Lightscatter Press is a micropress here in Utah whose publisher, Utah Poet Laureate Lisa Bickmore, and board of directors all live, write, and work in the state. It’s one of those dream presses for me because of the people involved and what the press embodies. I’ve said before that I don’t aspire to be on the biggest press. I want to be on a press that cultivates a sense of community and connection, a sense of people and place.

I’m touched by this. It’s good to know my work matters in some way to some people. After all, I’m not writing about what I’ve experienced for fun. It’s not an exercise. It’s a decision to enter into a way of being and to remain there for as long as it takes, which I hope is as long as I live.

The winner of the award is Sagirah Shahid, whose book SPIRIT: An African American Muslim Lyric, will be published in Spring 2027.

Image: My mother’s grandparents, father, aunts, cousin (who was passed off as an aunt if the rumor is true), and dog in front of one of their early homes in Oklahoma. This family photo and many more are woven into the fabric of Crude.