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Poetry
All Books in this Collection
Showing 17–32 of 52 results
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Eskimo Pie: A Poetics of Inuit Identity
$16.95Eskimo Pie: A Poetics of Inuit Identity examines Dunning’s lived history as an Inuk who was born, raised and continues to live south of sixty. Her writing takes into account the many assimilative practices that Inuit continue to face and the expectations of mainstream as to what an Inuk person can and should be. Her words examine what it is like to feel the constant rejection of her work from non-Inuit people and how we must all in some way find the spirit to carry through with what we hold to be true demonstrating the importance of standing tall and close to our words as Indigenous Canadians. We are the guardians of our work regardless of the cost to ourselves as artists and as Inuit people, we matter.
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Generations Re-merging
$18.95“Each generation must make their own / journey through a thick terrain” starts Generations Re-merging, a collection of poems which explores the complex tangle of intergenerational relationships and cultural issues encountered by a Mi’kmaw woman in the modern context, “where every moment / is the loss of something.” Alert to the fragility of community and culture, and to the pervasive threats against the natural and social environments which have traditionally fostered them, shalan joudry writes with lucidity of the challenge of confronting these global issues personally on her home ground, and of honouring the hope of past generations by renewing it in the present.
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Hear and Foretell
$15.95“Hear and Foretell” is a compelling poetry collection with spotlight on urban Aboriginal life in Canada. The poems illustrate deep spiritual transformation and understanding of the ever-present feeling of being hunted by not so distant historical past. This collection of poems emphasizes cultural struggles, articulates everyday rituals through decisive narrative, and appeals to human compassion. “Hear and Foretell” is an ambitious, lasting, and meaningful work of Canadian Aboriginal literature that will not soon fade away. It is an exceptional reading experience to be enjoyed and savoured.
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I Will Be Corrupted
$20.00I Will Be Corrupted is a collection of poems about a man who suffers from serious depression but is able to appear normal and live somewhat of a normal life. And yet what he sees and experiences in his everyday become poems and an insight into the mind of a kind and gentle person who wants to understand why he is here.
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In the Dog House
$16.95In her first idiom-shattering book of poetry, Wanda John-Kehewin endeavours to “speak her truth,” combining elements of First Nations oral tradition with a style of dramatic narrative that originates from the earliest traditions of cultural storytelling and also keeps pace with the rhythmical undulations of Canadian poets such as James Reaney and E.J. Pratt.
However, in a contemporary setting, the magniloquent narrative of nation-building has given way to fragmentary and reflexive self- examination that is inextricably bound to a history of colonization, the residual effects of which are buried deep within silent sufferers. Divided into four aspects of the Medicine Wheel – one of many stone structures scattered across the Alberta Plains – this collection calls for us to acknowledge the blatant neglect of quality of life on Native reserves and to explore ameliorative processes of restorative justice.
In emotive and yet wryly unsentimental tones, John-Kehewin lends her voice to many forms of suffering that surround enforced loss of culture, addressing topics such as alcohol addiction, familial abandonment, religious authority, sexual abuse, and the pain of mourning for loved ones. John-Kehewin does not spare herself when relating her own stories, even as she tells the stories of others that are so like her own, admonishing humanity for its lack of conscience in poems that journey from the turmoil of the Gaza Strip to rapidly dissolving ice floes …
Wanda John-Kehewin is, as she describes herself, “a First Nations woman searching for the truth and a way to be set free from the past” – shoving aside that lingering sense of shame and stigma – taking the reader on a healing journey that reveals language to be an elusive creature indeed and one that gives new definition to what being “in the dog house” could be, if we as human beings listen carefully and learn to remedy our misunderstandings.
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In the Silhouette of Your Silences
$15.95David Groulx’s latest book of poems is as smooth as a mirror, but as cutting and dazzling as shards of glass, reflecting back to us the collective voice of fractured lives. Weaving the ephemeral with the infinite, and the present with the past, he speaks with the strength and confidence of scarred experience, drawing the reader into a compelling narrative that confronts reality with black humour and raw beauty. Remarkable in its brilliance, and brilliant in its candour, In the Silhouette of Your Silences illuminates the delicate threads that bind us together, proving yet again that the distinctive voice of Aboriginal Canadians must and shall be heard.
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Indianland
$18.95Indianland is a rich and varied poetry collection. The poems are written from a female and Indigenous point of view and incorporate Anishinaabemowin throughout. Time is cyclical, moving from present day back to first contact and forward again. Themes of sexuality, birth, memory, and longing are explored, images of blood, plants (milkweed, yarrow, cattails), and petroglyphs reoccur, and touchstone issues in Indigenous politics are addressed = (Elijah Harper, Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women, forced sterilizations, Oka). Anishinaabemowin throughout. Time is cyclical, moving from present day back to first contact and forward again. Themes of sexuality, birth, memory, and longing are explored, images of blood, plants (milkweed, yarrow, cattails), and petroglyphs reoccur, and touchstone issues in Indigenous politics are addressed (Elijah Harper, Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women, forced sterilizations, Oka).
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Injun
$16.95Award-winning Nisga’a poet Jordan Abel’s third collection, Injun, is a long poem about racism and the representation of indigenous peoples. Composed of text found in western novels published between 1840 and 1950 – the heyday of pulp publishing and a period of unfettered colonialism in North America – Injun then uses erasure, pastiche, and a focused poetics to create a visually striking response to the western genre.
After compiling the online text of 91 of these now public-domain novels into one gargantuan document, Abel used his word processor’s “Find” function to search for the word “injun.” The 509 results were used as a study in context: How was this word deployed? What surrounded it? What was left over once that word was removed? Abel then cut up the sentences into clusters of three to five words and rearranged them into the long poem that is Injun. The book contains the poem as well as peripheral material that will help the reader to replicate, intuitively, some of the conceptual processes that went into composing the poem.
Though it has been phased out of use in our “post-racial” society, the word “injun” is peppered throughout pulp western novels. Injun retraces, defaces, and effaces the use of this word as a colonial and racial marker. While the subject matter of the source text is clearly problematic, the textual explorations in Injun help to destabilize the colonial image of the “Indian” in the source novels, the western genre as a whole, and the Western canon.
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Iskotew Iskwew: Poetry of a Northern Rez Girl
$17.95Iskotew Iskwew/Fire Woman is a poetry collection written during a period of trauma while the author was working as a Counsel to the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls in 2017. This book is about memories and experience growing up on the Pelican Narrows Reserve in northern Saskatchewan in the 1980s: summers spent on the land and the pain of residential school. With this collection, the author wants to teach and inform Canadians of her experiences growing up as an Indigenous woman in Saskatchewan. She believes it is important to share her stories for others to read.
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kipocihkân
$17.95The first anthology of urban Aboriginal songs by Gregory Scofield is a retrospective of the award-winning poet’s pivotal work to date. The word kipocihkan is Cree slang for someone who is mute or unable to speak, and charted in this book is Scofield’s journey out of that silence to become one of the most powerful voices of our time.”I make offerings to my Grandmothers and Grandfathers when I write. I ask them to come and sit with me, to give me courage and strength. I ask them to help me be honest, reflective of the ceremony that I am about to begin. I ask them to guide me, to help me touch people. I ask to make good medicine, even out of something bad. When people read my work it’s not just the book that they read, it’s the medicine behind the words. That’s where the power comes from. That’s where the healing comes from.”–Scofield in January Magazine
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Kitotam: He Speaks to it
$20.00The Neyhiyawak (Plains Cree) word “Kitotam” translates into English as, “He Speaks to It.” This is a collection of free-verse poetry by Indigenous poet and artist John McDonald. Written in two parts, these poems chronicle John’s life and experiences as an urban Indigenous youth during the 1980s. The second half of the book is a look into the inspirations and events, that shaped John’s career as an internationally known spoken word artist, beat poet, monologist and performance artist.
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Louis
$18.95Few figures in Canadian history have attained such an iconic status as Louis Riel. Celebrated Metis poet Gregory Scofield takes a fresh look at Riel in his new collection, Louis: The Heretic Poems, challenging traditional conceptions of Riel as simply a folk hero and martyr. By juxtaposing historical events and quotes with the poetic narrative, Scofield draws attention to the side of the Metis leader that most Canadians have never contemplated: that of husband, father, friend and lover, poet and visionary.Scofield also uses the collection to raise attention about the more crucial historical events of Riel’s lifetime–such as the Manitoba Resistance and the Northwest Resistance at Batoche–in order to illuminate the history of western Canadian Metis people and their struggles toward recognition. Scofield also examines Riel’s own poetry, most of which was devoted to exploring religious themes. Accordingly, religious imagery features strongly in the collection, complemented by a poetic voice that is rhythmic, repetitious, and lush with potent symbolism and simple, powerful images.
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Mother Time
$15.95After reading this collection, you will never look at mothers – at the playground, at the elementary school, or across the kitchen table – in quite the same way again. Beginning with a poem of pregnancy, written by her twenty-five year old self, Joanne Arnott leads us through a span of twenty years of inward- and outward-facing struggles, centred firmly in the ongoing work of becoming a mother.
Living on the thresholds between races – the poet is a prairie-born Métis – and between the generations, Arnott articulates the challenges of mothering in heart, body, and mind. Her work involves sometimes abstract, sometimes visceral long and short poems, song and chant. Through visiting and revisiting pregnancy, childbirth, lullabies, and multi-generational rage, the poetry moves from the desperation of survival through to a tender place of clarity. The sexual, the spiritual, and the sociological weave together here to shock, cajole, and ultimately to transform our picture of the inner life of the mother.
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Moving Upstream
$24.95Drawing on her Ojibwa roots and storytelling, Barnes shares stories that take the heart on the path to the past, nostalgic though it may be, wherein lies discovery, memories, and rhythms that ease the soul. Touching, tender but never overwrought, Barnes’ poetry brings wonder to the spirit of nature and provides a sense of connection to the things most often overlooked.
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nakamowin sa for the seasons
$17.95Rita Bouvier’s third collection of poetry is a response to the highs and lows of life and represents an attempt at restoring order through embracing others, reconciling the traumas caused by the deep scars of history, and soaring beyond life’s awkward and painful moments in order to live joyfully. Inspired by the metaphor of a voyageur sustained by song on his journeys up and down the rivers of Northwest Saskatchewan, these “songs for the seasons” draw heavily on images from nature as well as the joys, heartaches and transgressions Bouvier has witnessed and experienced as a Métis woman. Using imagery strongly connected to the natural environment, Bouvier evokes earth’s regeneration through the seasons as inspiration for moving forward.
Whether discussing the joys and trials of family life with poems such as “nigosis is sweet and sixteen” and “my grandmother’s hands”, offering her own take on history in “songs to sing” and “measured time”, or exploring Métis identity in “I have something important to say” and “Indigenous Man 2”, Bouvier captures the essence of a life that can be “joyful/one minute and then. agony”. Yet she always encourages the reader to become “caught in the movement and beauty/of life – dance, breathe, listen” and, of course, sing. -
Night Became Years
$19.95Night Became Years is poetry in the sauntering tradition of the flâneur. Stefanik loafers his way over sacred geography and explores his own mixed heritage through the lexicon of Elizabethan canting language. Comparing the terminology of fifteenth-century English beggar vernacular with a contemporary Canadian inner-city worldview, the poems in Night Became Years unfold as separate entities while at the same time forming a larger narrative on the possibilities of poetry today and the nature of mixed-blood identity.