Books

The Shining Hands of My Ponca Ancestors (NDSU Press) - available HERE

In sincere, from-the-heart storytelling, The Shining Hands of My Ponca Ancestors depicts the life of a young, contemporary Ponca, who—with the help of friends, relatives, spirits, and ancestors—is learning what is really possible for him and his tribe and how dramatically different that is from the dominant cultural messaging of his youth. An account of inspiration, ancestor intervention, the indestructible Indigenous core of his Native people, and the immense beauty of an ongoing way of life, Shining Hands is rife with meaning for Native and non-Native readers alike. Viewed through his personal life, Shining Hands is a prayer for the young that they may see their own powerful potential, too.

Notes of An Indigenous Futurist (Hema Press)

Notes of An Indigenous Futurist is an unfiltered, beadwork-and-Bigfoot saturated, ecstatic remembering of a fortysomething Ponca’s life, complete with longshot after-midnight Sundance prayers and visionary journeys into an impossible, inevitable, fully indigenized human future. Folded into its pages and poetry are portraits of Cliff Taylor’s tribe and people, his barroom brawler dad, his great-great-great grandfather Chief Standing Bear, and his trailerpark-and-HBO middle-of-nowhere childhood; as well as superpowered flash fiction imaginings of far-off worlds, reviews of Native masterworks that don’t exactly exist but also kind of do, and yearning-born dream articulations of the kinds of healing that are truly possible for the people of Turtle Island today. Deeply considered, shimmering with hard-earned wisdom, and co-created with his ancestors, Notes of An Indigenous Futurist is a hybrid work of the heart and imagination destined to be treasured and appreciated for generations to come. “Imbibe my tribe’s joy,” Cliff Taylor writes, “and I promise you will be changed.” 

The Creator’s Game: Poems Celebrating the 30th Annual Ponca Powwow

I wrote The Creator’s Game because this year’s powwow passed too fast and I wasn’t ready for it to be over yet –and also because I’m pretty sure it was the best powwow I’ve ever personally attended. Each day was like a novel, overflowing with too many soul-nourishing/healing experiences, reunions, magic moments, spirit-charged conversations, and quintessentially Ponca happenings to count. It was beautiful. It was unforgettable. It was all so inspiring that I had to write these poems about it, which allowed it to continue on for me and not end as I wrote them and lost myself in my remembering, which is what my heart really wanted. So, these poems are for you, as a piece of art for you if you were there or if you couldn’t make it this year. May the powwow in your heart never end. May the powwow in my heart never end. Love to everyone, Cliff

The Native Who Never Left

"I wrote these poems during November and December of 2022 and January of 2023. They started off without much thought as a way to reflect and share and say something on social media for Native American Heritage Month and then they just sort of took on a wild, galloping, spirit-charged, romantic, and yearning life of their own. After never having written a single poem on my phone, I wrote all of these poems on my phone. I wrote about half of them in the break room at the Co-op where I work and then the rest in my car, in bed, on the couch, in the airplane, in Connecticut, in a hospital, in the library. This book reached out from that same place those original sweet late night gas station energies came from and it compelled me to write it, to go for broke, to scream, cry, grieve, remember, pray, and sing. I listened, I typed with my thumbs, and I went for it; a Ponca with a vision for his people who wanted to embed some real part and presence of it in a homegrown, utterly personal book of poems. The book you now have in your hands."
-From The Introduction

"Cliff Taylor’s poems call us into the sacred space he inhabits as a human, a descendant of Chief Standing Bear, a seeker, and, at his heart, a storyteller. His poetic landscape is equal parts Wounded Knee and Scooby Doo, genocide and rebirth, grief for the lost, yet a reclaiming — both playful and fierce — of what remains. His voice is a landmark worthy of pilgrimage in the sacred geography of Indigenous storytelling, each stanza granting the reader a healing dose of “the medicine of remembering,” to quote the poet himself.”
-Suzanne Ohlmann, author of Shadow Migration: Mapping a Life

The Memory of Souls

This is a book about the little people; but it is also a book about elders, the old culture, the Sundance, dreams, the Ponca Tribe of Nebraska, healing, joy, and being Indian. It is the story of Cliff Taylor stumbling into his people's ways and then finding community and home, of him shedding the bindings of trauma and getting his soul back; it is the story of a young Ponca walking with the little people on a journey of cultural recovery/regeneration and remembrance. Part Letter To A Young Native, part Sundancer's memoir, The Memory of Souls is both a back pocket talisman and an old prayer song sung into the night for the future generations.