The thrum of The Next Act was a boon to Conor Kerr. Late in the autumn of 2023, the acclaimed poet and novelist began writing at the Edmonton pub, concentrating on his new manuscript about the ordinary chaos of living and working. Over four months, energized by the din, he developed the project from a long poem featuring two characters into a playful fusion of poetry and prose.

Billed “A Métis Poetic Novella,” Beaver Hills Forever, his fifth book, alternates between four Métis protagonists living in a city like Edmonton, each pursuing brighter futures amid capitalist and colonialist barriers. The book will be published by Arsenal Pulp Press on September 9. Kerr, a creative writing professor at the University of Alberta, wanted to examine individuals “just striving to create a better life for themselves, and their families around them,” he says, particularly those “who do that in a way that is not compromising.”

Similar to the narrative scaffolding in his 2021 debut novel, Avenue of Champions, Beaver Hills Forever links multiple perspectives to offer a deeper social picture. Kerr finds the stereotypical conversation around Indigenous peoples having to be cultural warriors or survivors grating.

“Not everyone has the financial freedom or the luck of the draw to be able to think about some of these other things. Some people just need to work, and that’s what the reality of their lives is, myself included,” he says. “Some of these nuances and notions that people put out there are based around privilege and not around the realities of people’s lives.”

Since the publication of his first book, the 2021 poetry collection An Explosion of Feathers, Kerr has emerged as a candid storyteller whose material draws on community and place. The praise for Avenue of Champions, which received the ReLit Award and was nominated for the Amazon Canada First Novel Award and the Giller Prize, continued with Old Gods, his 2023 poetry collection, which was nominated for a Governor General’s Literary Award.

Further recognition arrived when his 2024 neo-noir, Prairie Edge, appeared on the shortlists for the Giller Prize and the Atwood Gibson Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize. Kerr, who started writing as a youth, in part, to reflect his Métis/Ukrainian experience, is aware of the growing audience. Still, he remains pragmatic about success: “People love the idea of nominating prairie work for awards, and never letting it win.”

In Beaver Hills Forever, tradesman Buddy faces the emotional and physical distance created by working out of town to provide for his partner and children. Feeling left behind, Baby Momma cares for their family and opts to go back to school.

Dropping out and disenchanted, Fancy University Boy transitions from student to member of the workforce. Higher learning also supplies the setting for Aunty Prof, who is exhausted by the politics of academia and questions whether professional ambition was worth the cost to her love life.

“She used to think that she was going to change the world,” Kerr writes. “How quickly that notion gets beaten out of you as you have/ To roll through what it actually means to be an adult in a Western/ Capitalist culture. Even if that same culture is on your territory.”

These characters confront economic and racial inequalities – a central theme of Beaver Hills Forever. Portraying those who work to live was crucial. “People in these ivory towers or spaces try to stigmatize blue-collar work often but, in reality, it’s a great thing to be able to do, and it’s a beautiful job and people need to do it,” says Kerr, who adds that most of his family and friends are employed in blue-collar jobs. “We tend to almost look down on people doing those kinds of things, often from these spaces. I want to start writing those characters more into existence.”

Already focused on a forthcoming novel, Duck Blind, with plans for another on the horizon, Kerr credits his productivity to the discipline he honed as a student in the Creative Writing MFA program at the University of British Columbia. It is now a daily practice that brings him much satisfaction.

Beaver Hills Forever is a departure in both form and tone. Hope and humour glint here even as the cast struggle in their respective searches for fulfillment. Sanguinity, Kerr admits, isn’t always present in his fiction. 

“A lot of the characters in my books have been beat down by life in different ways, and don’t necessarily carry the optimism of the world. I don’t think they should either,” he says. “I think we’ve all come to the realization that things aren’t going to get better or change – that’s just life and what it is. So how do we just grasp and figure that out and live the best lives on our own, within our own families and communities?”

Photo of Conor Kerr by Jay Walker.