Annie Wen­strup is a Dena’ina poet. Her work recent­ly appeared in About Place, Diode, Ecotone, The New England Review, Poetry, and Ran Off with the Star Bassoon and is forth­com­ing in Poets & Writers, and The Kenyon Review. Her poetry col­lec­tion, The Museum of Unnat­ur­al His­to­ries, is forth­com­ing from Wes­leyan Uni­ver­si­ty Press (March 2025). You can read more about Annie and her work at www.akwenstrup.com 

What do you write?

Poems and essays. Lately I’ve been writing essays about Alaska. I’m orig­i­nal­ly from Anchor­age but I’ve spent the last 17 years in Fair­banks. I have a lot of ques­tions about what it means to live here. What would a rec­i­p­ro­cal rela­tion­ship with the more-than-human-world look like here? What are my respon­si­bil­i­ties to the com­mu­ni­ties I belong to? 

My poetry uses form—nonce and received—to explore how expe­ri­ences of embod­i­ment. The ques­tions I bring to poetry are more neb­u­lous than what I bring to prose. What shape would this expe­ri­ence make on the page? What kind of con­so­nance or pat­tern­ing echoes this emo­tion­al tenor? 

Is there an author or artist who has most pro­found­ly influ­enced your work?

My thesis began as a col­lec­tion of ekphras­tic poems. I have a hard time sitting down to an empty page and believ­ing that I can write a first draft of a poem. It’s a hor­ri­bly uncom­fort­able expe­ri­ence. But engag­ing with art removes that barrier, because the ekphras­tic poem con­tin­ues a con­ver­sa­tion that another artist has already begun. So, it feels a little less like approach­ing a blank page. Recent­ly I’ve been car­ry­ing images by the artists Sarah Whalen Lunn, Flo­rence Napaaq Male­wotkuk, and Susie Bevins close to my heart while I work. 

Why did you choose Stonecoast for your MFA?

I was ini­tial­ly attract­ed to Stonecoast because of its excel­lent poetry faculty and the WISE program. But what decided it for me was a con­ver­sa­tion I had with Justin about the incom­ing poetry cohort. He was so excited about the incom­ing class. He spoke about his hopes for how each poet’s strengths would com­ple­ment the cohort as whole. I knew I wanted to be in an envi­ron­ment that valued com­mu­ni­ty over competition. 

What is your favorite Stonecoast memory?

During the summer 2021 res­i­den­cy, Cate Marvin taught “Trauma vs. Trans­gres­sion” which exam­ined the rela­tion­ship between con­fes­sion­al poetry and white suprema­cy culture. I had one true “aha” moment in that class that clar­i­fied what I wanted to explore in my man­u­script. The course also pro­vid­ed me with insight into how white suprema­cy culture shapes my life. 

What do you hope to accom­plish in the future?

I’m excited about my role as Alumni and Donor Rela­tions Coor­di­na­tor at Indige­nous Nations Poets. We’re a nation­al orga­ni­za­tion that pro­vides men­tor­ship to emerg­ing Native writers. I was an In-Na-Po Fellow during my final semes­ter at Stonecoast and the Fel­low­ship helped with the post-grad­u­a­tion tran­si­tion. My goal is to ensure that other emerg­ing Indige­nous Poets have access to lit­er­ary spaces that support tribal, cul­tur­al, and lin­guis­tic sovereignty. 

If you could have written one book, story, or poem that already exists, which would you choose?

The Monster at the End of This Book by Jon Stone.

***The fol­low­ing poem first appeared in Poetry North­west, Summer & Fall 2021.

“My Heart is a Rube Gold­berg Machine” 

by Annie Wenstrup

My Heart is a Rube Goldberg Machine

It looks like an alcove, a nave, a maze of pneu­mat­ic tubes. 

Drive through banking. It exchanges blue notes for red. 

It’s famous. I’ve seen it on screen,

repro­duced in grainy black and white. 

It’s how I’ve met every­one important. 

We—the sono­g­ra­ph­er, my husband and I—

sounded out my son, later my daughter

this way. We bounced waves off 

their tadpole bodies and ren­dered them

into pixels.

When I see my heart, its ascending

and descend­ing aortas, left and right

pul­monary veins and arter­ies, I smell

dis­in­fec­tant. The ether assaults my nose

and I remem­ber my first roommate. 

I think of how she whis­pered that she

was des­per­ate to feel any­thing, and she’d

snort any­thing. Hoping for pleasure. 

Set­tling for pain. 

When we met, her heart was a with­ered fist                         pound­ing odd tempos at odd hours. 

She said it was like having a cranky neigh­bor that pounded a broom when­ev­er you vac­u­umed. We never vac­u­umed                                                            so I never found out if that was true. 

I think vacuums work

by inhal­ing air through 

a pneu­mat­ic tube,

exchang­ing air 

for more air. 

And when I think about air

and how it doesn’t look like anything

at all, I remem­ber how odd it was

to have so much of it—

enough to yell, later enough to cry, when she had none at all.