Luke Warm Water

The American Indian poet known as Luke Warm Water was born and raised in Rapid City, South Dakota, and is a Lakota (Sioux). Luke has featured at poetry venues throughout the United States and in Europe, and has won Poetry Slam competitions from Oregon to Germany. He was the first spoken-word poet to be awarded an Archibald Bush Foundation individual artist fellowship in literature. Luke’s poetry appears in the book Shedding Skins: Four Sioux Poets (2008), published by Michigan State University Press. He will release his next book Selected & New Poems (1999-2009): A Decade of Malformation in late 2009. Luke currently resides in Oakland, California.

“Luke Warm Water’s poems are sprinkled with dry sarcasm and dark wit as he pulls the reader, often uncomfortably, through bitter sweetly tragic stories told in rhythmic, upbeat, casual prose. [He] brings into the light the funny and often awkward juxtaposition of modern and traditional Indian culture met with white urban and suburban worlds”
           – Amethyst Thorpe, Lakota Journal (November 2007)