Poet honored for work that reflects Indigenous and firefighting roots
Ibe Liebenberg channels his experiences as a first responder and First American into lines of poetry, and he has been recognized as an emerging writer by a national literary competition.
Liebenberg, Paradise, California, won the 2024 Sowell Emerging Writers Prize for his first book of poetry “Birds at Night.”
The Sowell Emerging Writers Prize is an annual competition that accepts submissions of poetry, nonfiction and fiction. The award is sponsored by Terrain.org, the Sowell Family Collection at Texas Tech University and Texas Tech University Press.
Along with a cash award, Liebenberg’s “Birds at Night” will be published by Texas Tech University Press in early 2025.
Liebenberg, a Chickasaw citizen, works as a seasonal firefighter for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (Cal Fire). He is also an instructor in the English department at Chico State University, Chico, California.
He said his first experience with a poetry contest came in the fifth grade with a mandatory school poetry competition.
“Everyone had to enter it, and of course this was in the ‘80s when it was not very popular to be a male and a poet,” he chuckled.
“They announced the winner over the loudspeaker, and it was me. I was just like, ‘What?’ I felt like I didn’t put that much effort into it,” Liebenberg said.
Years passed without a poetic thought, until he resumed his pursuit for higher education in his mid-30s. While taking courses to complete an associate degree in fire science, he enrolled in an advanced English class which turned out to be a literature course.
“They covered not only fiction, but also we read some poetry. What really got me was the World War I and World War II poetry. Here they were writing about very traumatic experiences.”
Many of the poems had biographies stating the poem was found on the soldier’s body, Liebenberg explained, and it captured his attention.
“It was the last thing they wrote. In academia, they always talk about the ‘so what’ factor and that’s profound. It is not like what people think poetry is, writing about love and flowers or whatever.”
As he continued to serve as a firefighter, it occurred to Liebenberg that, much like the soldiers who penned battlefield poems, he was also witnessing traumatic, life-changing events almost every day.
“I would make notes and (think) there is no way I could write about this stuff. It is just too traumatic.”
The more literature courses he took, the more he understood how the poets would write around things, the traumas did not have to be the focal point of the work, he explained.
“It didn’t have to be so in your face.”
Using this technique, poetry became a creative outlet for him. As American poet Robert Frost penned, “Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words.”
Liebenberg would pour the trauma and distress he witnessed on the job onto the page.
“It was extremely hard to do, and I wasn’t very successful at it. I felt like my first poems were very shock and awe.”With a lot of practice, Liebenberg learned to nuance his words and make the poem more about the details and less about the overt trauma.
His writing skill is the result of talent and many hours of practice in the pursuit of higher education.
A few years after he completed his associate degree in fire science, Liebenberg earned a bachelor’s degree in literature and a master’s degree in creative writing poetry from Chico State.
Wanting to enhance his poetic education, he applied and was accepted to the Master of Fine Arts program at the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA), Santa Fe, New Mexico.
At the university, “Everything was poetry,” he said. “You ate, slept, breathed and read everything that was poetry. It was exactly the experience that I was looking for.”
Liebenberg went on to earn a Master of Fine Arts in poetry and fiction from IAIA, completing his coursework about a year ago. He was able to meet his educational goals with the help of the Chickasaw Nation, he said.
“I can’t give enough credit to Chickasaw Nation Higher Education grants and scholarships for helping financially. There was no way I could have afforded going to that school.”
He also was awarded a Full Circle Scholar scholarship from the American Indian College Fund for each of the three years he attended IAIA.
He said the decision to apply to IAIA was easy because his Chickasaw heritage made it his only choice. The university is home to many First American tribal citizens all of whom have different experiences and cultures. “It was just a breath of fresh air because they just let you be a writer and they are very understanding,” Liebenberg said.
Soon after graduating from IAIA, he won the “Tribal College Journal” student creative writing contest in both fiction, for “Breakfast, 0800 Hours,” and in poetry for “Gar Fish Dance.”
Liebenberg’s work has also been published in POETRY, The Threepenny Review and elsewhere, but “Birds at Night” is his first collection to be published.
The powerful poems in “Birds at Night” explore themes of loss, trauma, PTSD, recovery,indigeneity and family.
“These brief, intense poems amplify the sensations and silences of interior moments of crisis and catharsis,” according to Texas Tech University Press.
“A haunting meditation on what keeps us up at night, Liebenberg invites the reader to contend with their own responses to exigent circumstances.
Drawing on the resiliency of the natural world in the face of changing climate, birds, wolves and fire populate the stanzas. Migration and adaptation are the poetic subjects, but they are also the embodied language of each taut line.”
Liebenberg said he also draws from his Chickasaw heritage for inspiration, which can be traced on his maternal side of the family.
“My great-grandfather was Floyd Walden and his daughter was my grandmother, Joanne Lewis.”
Walden attended Chilocco Indian Agriculture School in northern Oklahoma, and Liebenberg treasures and safeguards beaded works of art his grandfather created.
Although he was not reared learning Chickasaw culture and language, the California native understood his Chickasaw heritage while he was growing up and he was proud of it.
As an adult, he intertwines his First American heritage in his work.
His favorite poem in the “Birds at Night” collection is “Wolf OR 93.”
“We haven’t had wolves in California for almost 100 years, but then they started making these packs up in Oregon and slowly but surely one or two would come down into California. It was just wild because you would read about these accounts, (the wolves) are looking for a mate but there is nothing down here.”
“Wolf OR 93 ” highlights the sense of connection with the natural world and being sensitive and empathetic to it, he explained.
The most difficult process of submitting his works for competition was combining the range of poems into a cohesive package, he said.
“It finally came together but it was hard organizing it into a manuscript.”
“Birds at Night” is available for preorder at TtuPress.org and Amazon.com, and will be available March 2025.
For more information, visit IbeLiebenbergcom.wordpress.com.