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Poetry in Motion: Justene Dion-Glowa + Trailer Park Shakes
Sachiko Murakami says of queer Métis poet Justene Dion-Glowa’s collection Trailer Park Shakes (Brick Books) that their “voice crackles with frank, startling insight.” You’ll find the same with their video reading of “Ruts” from the collection, below.
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ALU Editor
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The poems in Trailer Park Shakes are direct and vernacular, rooted in community—a working-class Métis voice rarely heard from.These poems, while dreamlike and playful, bear unflinching witness to the workings of injustice — how violence is channeled through institutions and refracted intimately between people, becoming intertwined with the full range of human experience, including care and love. Trailer Park Shakes is a book that seems to want to hold everything — an entire cross-section of lived experience — written by a poet whose courage, attention, and capacity to trace contradiction inspire trust in their words’ embrace. Dion-Glowa’s poems are quietly philosophical, with a heartfelt, self-possessed politic.
Justene Dion-Glowa reads “Ruts” from Trailer Park Shakes
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Justene Dion-Glowa is a queer Métis creative, beadworker and poet born in Win-Nipi (Winnipeg) and has been residing in Secwepemcú’lecw since 2014. They are a Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity alumni. They have been working in the human services field for nearly a decade. Their microchap, TEETH, is available from Ghost City Press. Trailer Park Shakes is their first full length poetry book.
