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Spring preview 2015: short fiction & poetry

ABORIGINAL VERSE

spring-06The third collection of poetry from Métis writer Rita Bouvier, nakamowin’sa for the seasons (Thistledown), invokes nature imagery and the idea of the voyageur who persevered through the seasons by way of song (the source of the volume’s title). Bouvier investigates the pain of history, the restoration of order, and the renewal of the Earth.


Un/inhabited (Talonbooks), the second collection from Nisga’a poet Jordan Abel, is a “source text” created by searching all the instances of words relating to territory, land, and ownership in the public domain works catalogued online by Project Gutenberg. The result is what fellow poet Shane Rhodes calls “graphic art, anti-poetry, a trace history of reading, and sociological groundwork.”


The title of Marilyn Dumont’s new collection, The Pemmican Eaters (ECW), recalls former Prime Minister John A. Macdonald’s term for the Métis people. Dumont combines free verse and metre to recreate the linguistic, political, and cultural intricacies of the Riel Rebellions.