Kyoi-Kuksu

Kuksu: Journal of Backcountry Writing

I brought out the first issue of Kyoi while I was wintering in an 8 x 16 shanty on Elk Rigde, above Salmon Creek, in southern Humboldt county. I figured that there were probably a bunch of other poets like myself, holed up in other cabins across Northern California, and that we all needed a place to publish our poems. It turned out that there were backcountry watersheds not only in California, but in Oregon, Washington, Montana, Arkansas, Vermont, Maine, Arizona, New Mexico, British Columbia–that had vibrant back-to-the-land communities. The contributors in Kyoi #1 were almost entirely from Southern Humboldt, but the circle quickly enlarged. Contributing editors included James Ekedal (Deerhawk), Steve Sanfield, and Gary Snyder. Many of the poets and writers whose early writings (sometimes first) appeared in Kuksu are now familiar names, including Gretel Ehrlich, Steve Sanfield, Steven Levine, Howard Norman, Ray Raphael, David Simpson, Peter Blue Cloud, Bret Blosser, Philip Daughtry, Gary Lawless, Sharon Doubiago, Gary Paul Nabhan, Luke Breit, Tim McNulty, Alma Villanueva, Roger Dunsmore,and Jim Heynen. The Kyoi-Kuksu archives are now in Special Collections at the University of California at Davis.