Louis Oliver (poet)

Louis Oliver (April 9, 1904 – May 10, 1991), also known as Little Coon or Wotkoce Okisce, was an American poet of the Muscogee (Creek) people. His poetry combines themes of Creek folklore with an examination of intellectualism in the context of the Creek nation.

Oliver was born on April 9, 1904, in Coweta, Oklahoma, which at the time was still part of the Indian Territories; his parents died when he was young and he was raised by relatives in Okfuskee. He studied at the Euchee Indian School and then Bacone College; unlike many of his contemporaries, he earned a high school diploma in 1926, an accomplishment that alienated some other Muscogee who accused him of "capitulating to the White Man's ways".

While living among the Cherokee in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, in the early 1980s, Oliver joined a writing group that included several published authors, and moved away from the more classical European forms of poetry that he had been practicing until then. He became the author of two books of poetry, Caught in a willow net: poems and stories (Greenfield Review Press, 1983) and Chasers of the sun: Creek Indian thoughts (Greenfield Review Press, 1990). In 1987, the Este Mvskoke Arts Council of the Muscogee people gave him their inaugural Alexander Posey Literary Award. He died on May 10, 1991, in Tahlequah.

One of his poems, about and in the form of a tornado, is included in the Wall poems in Leiden outdoor poetry project in Leiden, Netherlands.

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