''Blood Run'' is a volume of

free verse Free verse is an open form of poetry, which in its modern form arose through the French ''vers libre'' form. It does not use consistent meter patterns, rhyme, or any musical pattern. It thus tends to follow the rhythm of natural speech. Definit ...

poetry Poetry (derived from the Greek ''poiesis'', "making"), also called verse, is a form of literature that uses aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language − such as phonaesthetics, sound symbolism, and metre − to evoke meanings i ...

written by

Allison Hedge Coke Allison Adelle Hedge Coke is an American poet and editor. Her debut book, ''Dog Road Woman'', won the American Book Award and was the first finalist of the Paterson Poetry Prize and Diane DeCora Award. Since then, she has written five more books ...

. It was published in the UK by Salt Publications in November 2006,"Blood Run by Allison Adelle Hedge Coke,"
Salt Publishing website, undated. Retrieved 18 August 2010. and was subsequently published in the US in February 2007. The book reads as a verse-play regarding the indigenous mound city on the border of

Iowa Iowa () is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States, bordered by the Mississippi River to the east and the Missouri River and Big Sioux River to the west. It is bordered by six states: Wisconsin to the northeast, Illinois to the ...

and

South Dakota South Dakota (; Sioux language, Sioux: , ) is a U.S. state in the West North Central states, North Central region of the United States. It is also part of the Great Plains. South Dakota is named after the Lakota people, Lakota and Dakota peo ...

that is today referred to as the

Blood Run Site The Blood Run Site is an archaeological site on the border of the US states of Iowa and South Dakota. The site was essentially populated for 8,500 years, within which earthworks structures were built by the Oneota Culture and occupied descendant ...

. Hedge Coke writes of the need to preserve and protect these ruins, which contain the buried remains of

native people Indigenous peoples are culturally distinct ethnic groups whose members are directly descended from the earliest known inhabitants of a particular geographic region and, to some extent, maintain the language and culture of those original people ...

Awards

Hedge Coke won the Writer of the Year award from the Wordcraft Circle of Native Writers and Storytellers for ''Blood Run'' in 2007. Hedge Coke was awarded an Individual Artist Fellowship by the South Dakota Arts Council to research the site and create the Blood Run volume in 2002/2003.

References

2006 books American poetry collections Literature by Native American women 2006 poems {{poetry-collection-stub