Tag: wîhtamawik/Tell Them: On a Life of Inspiration

26. Louise Bernice Halfe—Sky Dancer, wîhtamawik/Tell Them: On a Life of Inspiration

Louise Halfe is an important poet; the former Saskatchewan poet laureate and parliamentary poet laureate’s work reveals the truth of residential schools and colonialism more generally, and the difficult work of recovery and restoring balance to individuals and communities, in ways that would cause the scales to drop from the eyes of the most entrenched denialist. And wîhtamawik/Tell Them: On a Life of Inspiration, her new collection of short essays and poems, is also (not surprisingly) essential.

The subtitle, especially the word “inspiration,” is the key. Inspiration is related to respiration, and for Halfe, inspiration flows like breath, in and out, a cyclical rhythm that’s linked to other cycles (the round of the seasons, for instance) and the wind. The book’s first poem refers to the wind’s “plaintive breath,” and the last one concludes, “I will be one / with their breath.” Those lines are about “the Night Sky Dancers,” the “Great Mystery” that nourishes Halfe constantly.

So much has happened to interfere with those relationships, to block both breath and inspiration: residential schools, lateral violence, colonialism, cultural genocide. wîhtamawik traces possibilities of recovery from those ongoing harms, through language and ceremony and creative expression. It presents us with layered connections, between the cycles of our bodies and our lives, and the greater cycles of the world that sustain us. It shares ethical truths from Plains Cree or nêhiyaw culture, ideals we would all do well to try to follow. It emphasizes a holistic approach to life, one that brings together our minds, bodies, spirits, and the earth. There’s a lot to think about here, and that thinking can only open up new possibilities, perhaps ones that lead towards the decolonization Halfe urges.

I will be in conversation with Halfe and poet and scholar Jesse Archibald-Barber at Artesian in Regina on the evening of Tuesday, May 19, as part of the Cathedral Village Arts Festival. It promises to be a productive discussion; if you’re in or close to Regina, please join us.

15. Laurie D. Graham, Calling It Back to Me

Almost everything I’ve read and posted about in the past month has been connected to work. This book, Laurie D. Graham’s Calling It Back to Me, wasn’t–at least, not directly. I’m a fan of Graham’s poetry, and when I heard back in January that Calling It Back to Me was going to be published, I preordered a copy. It arrived on Friday. Yesterday I found myself eating dinner in a restaurant by myself, and luckily, Calling It Back to Me was in my backpack. I read it quickly, unable to put it down. It’s just excellent.

Calling It Back to Me begins with two epigraphs. One is from the Irish writer Eavan Boland (who is a recurring presence in Louise Halfe-Skydancer’s new book wîhtamawik/Tell Them: On a Life of Inspiration): “A hundred years ago she was a child. But where? Strange to think that once the circumstances of her life were simple and available. They have become, with time, fragments and guesswork.” The second is from The Larger Conversation: Contemplation and Place by Tim Lilburn, a book that’s been waiting on my bookshelf for my attention for quite some time: “All thinking is a kind of autobiography, and autobiography always encompasses more than a single life.” Both fit Calling It Back to Me perfectly, since it’s about Graham’s grandmothers and great-grandmothers, the fragments of their lives she’s been able to piece together, to guess at, and the lives around their lives, their families and communities.

The book is divided into four sections, and I’m not sure if they’re four long poems (possible) or four collections of untitled poems (also possible). In syntax, line, and layout, they emphasize the fragmentary nature of what Graham has been able to piece together about her forebears. The first section, “Calling It Back to Me,” focuses on the objects those women left behind: photographs, a few documents, “a darning mushroom / a tin of teaspoons.” Those objects might be “heirlooms” that belong to Graham’s mother or grandmother, who is the subject of the final section, “A Good Closing,” where she is being moved from her home into assisted living or long-term care with Graham’s assistance. The other two sections, nestled within that frame, turn to other ancestors: “The Great-Grandmothers” presents fragmentary biographies of those four women, all of whom settled in Saskatchewan and Alberta after emigrating from Europe; and “Toward an Origin Story” provides a slightly broader consideration of the causes and effects of the arrival of Graham’s forebears (and other settlers) here. I had been at a meeting that afternoon of people working to encourage the preservation of grassland ecology in Saskatchewan before I sat down to read Calling It Back to Me, and “Toward an Origin Story” reflected the concerns I heard expressed there:

they sailed off
to become the boot

of the plains, stamping
out the grasses and trees–

investment companies
bulldozing the windbreaks,

filling in the sloughs, flattening
hills and houses, seeding the ditches,

every arable, pilfered inch–

the settlement story going sour
in the heat and the haze.

The ecological damage of that process is paired with the human costs (addiction, injury, child mortality, exile), which shifts to Graham’s experiences of funerals, of trying to pull together fragments of information to tell her ancestors stories, a history which stubbornly remains a collection of shards. The lines here tend to be short, encouraging a slow, even elegaic reading cadence, and the poems are in couplets and single lines, sometimes spread across the page or spaced out almost as if they were in columns and could be read horizontally or vertically, all of which reinforces the way that stories, especially the stories of women, don’t survive intact.

I read Calling It Back to Me without stopping, almost without taking a breath. I want to read it again: more slowly this time, I think, so that I can savour it.