river woman

By katherena vermette

Governor General’s Award–winning Métis poet and acclaimed novelist Katherena Vermette’s second collection, river woman, explores her relationship to nature — its destructive power and beauty, its timelessness, and its place in human history.

Award-winning Métis poet and novelist Katherena Vermette’s second book of poetry, river woman, examines and celebrates love as decolonial action. Here love is defined as a force of reclamation and repair in times of trauma, and trauma is understood to exist within all times. The poems are grounded in what feels like an eternal present, documenting moments of clarity that lift the speaker (and reader) out of the illusion of linear experience. This is what we mean when we describe a work of art as being timeless.

Like the river they speak to, these poems return again and again to the same source in search of new ways to reconstruct what has been lost. Vermette suggests that it’s through language and the body ― particularly through language as it lives inside the body ― that a fragmented self might resurface as once again whole. This idea of breaking apart and coming back together is woven throughout the collection as the speaker contemplates the ongoing negotiation between the city, the land, and the water, and as she finds herself falling into trust with the ones she loves.

Vermette honours the river as a woman ― her destructive power and beauty, her endurance, and her stories. These poems sing from a place where “words / transcend ceremony / into everyday” and “nothing / is inanimate.”

• Language: English
• Publisher: House of Anansi Press
• Release date: Sep 25, 2018
• ISBN: 9781487003470

katherena vermette

KATHERENA VERMETTE is a Métis writer from Treaty One territory, the heart of the Métis nation, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. Her first book, North End Love Songs (The Muses Company), won the Governor General’s Literary Award for Poetry. Her NFB short documentary, this river, won the Coup de Coeur at the Montreal First Peoples Festival and a Canadian Screen Award. Her first novel, The Break, is the winner of three Manitoba Book Awards and the Amazon.ca First Novel Award, and it was a finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction, the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize, and CBC Canada Reads.

Book preview

also by katherena vermette

POETRY

North End Love Songs

FICTION

The Break

CHILDREN’S LITERATURE

The Seven Teachings Stories Series

A Girl Called Echo Series

Copyright © 2018 Katherena Vermette

Published in Canada in 2018 and the USA in 2018 by House of Anansi Press Inc.

www.houseofanansi.com

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

House of Anansi Press is committed to protecting our natural environment. As part of our efforts, the interior of this book is printed on paper made from second-growth forests and is acid-free.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Vermette, Katherena, 1977–, author

River woman / Katherena Vermette.

Poems.

Issued in print and electronic formats.

ISBN 978-1-4870-0346-3 (softcover).—ISBN 978-1-4870-0348-7 (hardcover).—

ISBN 978-1-4870-0347-0 (EPUB).—ISBN 978-1-4870-0626-6 (Kindle)

I. Title.

PS8643.E74R59 2018    C811'.6     C2018-900061-9

   C2018-900062-7

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018931738

Cover artwork: Red River 1870s (beaded map) (2006) by David Garneau;

collection of the Murray Library, University of Saskatchewan

Cover design: Sara Loos

Text design and typesetting: Laura Brady

We acknowledge for their financial support of our publishing program the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, and the Government of Canada.

For Reuben

Contents

black river

pieces

breathe

river

lake

black river

ghosts

tongues

scars

arch

a fine dust

speak

Anishnaabemowin

cocoon

inches

crowfight

broken

red river

ziibiwan (like a river)

river woman

riveredge

riverdawn

riverevening

riverlove

riverstory

riverlocks

where

riversong

riverceremony

this river

an other story

an other story

new year’s eve 2013

uncarved

another winter

how to argue

I come from a place that

métissage / Métis Sage

when Louis Riel went crazy

bury me at Batoche

long winter poem

I write you into every word every

an other story

acknowledgements

"I assert that poetry without politics is narcissistic and not useful to us. I also

Reviews for river woman

[Hero The Bard · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Beautiful writing. It makes you both think and feel. Will read again. Recommending to my friends.

[dreesie-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

In this poetry collection Vermette focuses on rivers, being Métis, and indigenous life.. Rivers' behavior in flowing, moving, mixing. In knowing and in strength and power and lasting and watching. Métis life as attached to the land, the forests. As belonging. Missing what was, and missing the women who have disappeared.These poems are spare, most lines have 4 or fewer words. Their is some strong wordplay (an other/another as an example). Most refer to nature in part or in total.My favorites were River, Back River, speak, ziibiwan (like a river), New Year's Eve 2013, métissage/Métis Sage.