CoCoPoPro: Indigena Awry and the Experimental Poetics of Annharte

Annharte’s poetry lays bare a different Canada than many of us want to see—colonial, capitalist, racist, sexist, paternalistic. She calls them out one by one with glaring accuracy, and all with a mischievous glint in her eye. As the back cover of the book reads, "jazz inflections of Beat writing are often apparent in her work. She swings from a poetic madness into a mad poetics." Reading her poetry, especially out loud, triggers a visceral response. Find yourself holding your breath, widening your eyes, smirking, laughing out loud, wincing in pain and in recognition. 

Our featured poem is from her most recent collection, Indigena Awry (New Star Books, 2012). 

*****

Annharte, AKA Marie Baker, is Anishinabe (Little Saskatchewan First Nation, Manitoba). She has moved her urban campground back to her birthplace, otherwise known as Winnipeg. The author of three previous poetry books, and she also has a book of essays, AKA, out in Fall 2013 from Capilano University Editions. 

You can find a review of her last collection of poetry, Exercises in Lip Pointing (New Star Books, 2003) here. Read more about her experimental poetics in Poets Talk (University of Alberta Press, 2005) and in Reg Johanson’s essay "Straight Forward Approach: Annharte’s Exercises in Lip Pointing," in Antiphones (the Gig, 2008).

_______Edited from the original post, published on the LPG blog