Shannon Webb-Campbell
Shannon Webb-Campbell is a mixed-Indigenous (Mi'kmaq) settler poet, writer, and critic currently based in Montreal. Her first book, Still No Word (2015) was the inaugural recipient of Egale Canada's Out In Print Award. She was Canadian Women in the Literary Arts critic-in-residence in 2014, and sits on CWILA's board of directors. Her work has appeared in many anthologies, journals and publications across Canada including the Globe and Mail, Geist Magazine, the Malahat Review, Canadian Literature, Room, and Quill and Quire. In 2017 she facilitated a book club-style reading of The Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada at Atwater Library in Montreal; she also championed Carl Daniel's novel Bearskin Diary for CBC Montreal's Turtle Island Reads. I Am a Body of Land is her second book.
Books (3)
Synopsis:
I Am a Body of Land by Shannon Webb-Campbell explores poetic responsibility and accountability, and frames poetry as a form of revisioning. In these poems, Webb-Campbell returns to her own text Who Took My Sister?, to examine her self and to decolonize, unlearn, and undo harm. By reconsidering individual poems and letters, Webb-Campbell's confessional writing circles back upon itself to ask questions of her own settler-Indigenous identity and belonging to cry out for community, and call in with love.
With an introduction by multiple award-winning writer and activist Lee Maracle.
Reviews
“Shannon Webb-Campbell’s work forces readers out of polite conversation and into a realm where despair and hard truths are being told, being heard and finding the emotional strength to learn from it, find our way out and embrace our beauty as Indigenous women.”—Carol Rose Daniels, author of Hiraeth and Bearskin Diary, winner of the First Nations Communities READ Award and the Aboriginal Literature Award.
“Poetry awake with the winds from the Four Directions, poetry that crosses borders, margins, treaties, yellow tape warning: Police Line. Do Not Cross. Poetry whose traditional territory, through colonization, has become trauma and shame. Unceded poetry. Read. Respect. Weep.”—Susan Musgrave, author of Origami Dove
Educator Information
Recommended in the Canadian Indigenous Books for Schools 2019-2020 resource list as being useful for grades 10 to 12 in the areas of Media Studies, Social Studies, and English Language Arts.
Additional Information
74 pages | 5.25" x 8.00"
Synopsis:
Expansive and enveloping, Webb-Campbell's collection asks, "Who am I in relation to the moon?" These poems explore the primordial connections between love, grief, and water, structured within the lunar calendar.
The poetics follow rhythms of the body, the tides, the moon, and long, deep familial relationships that are both personal and ancestral. Originating from Webb-Campbell's deep grief of losing her mother, Lunar Tides charts the arc to finding her again in the waves. Written from a mixed Mi'kmaq/settler perspective, this work also explores the legacies of colonialism, kinship and Indigenous resurgence.
Lunar Tides is the ocean floor and a moonlit night: full of possibility and fundamental connections.
Reviews
"Lunar Tides, Shannon Webb-Campbell exposes a heart that's broken but also carried across the gulf between the moon and the sea, a heart that knows how "grief takes up with the body." She shows us that grief is tidal, its ebb and flow pulsing like the moon and dog-earring our memories. This book reminds us that, grieving or not, we "need to be held by something other than a theory." —Douglas Walbourne-Gough, author of Crow Gulch
Additional Information
128 pages | 6.00" x 8.00" | Paperback
Synopsis:
In nature, rewilding restores biodiversity and ecosystems. In this new collection from award-winning poet Shannon Webb-Campbell, it is a form of Indigenous resurgence and pleasure.
Drawing upon ecology, traditional knowledge, and sexuality, Re: Wild Her is a personal and poetic awakening. In these pages artistry and nature are intertwined, speaking to the sensual musings of lovers in Paris, driftwood and death cycles, and the rise of wild swimming and cold dipping. Throughout, reclaiming one’s divine femininity is celebrated as a powerful act of resistance and rejuvenation.
These “poem spells” each offer a different prism with which to rewild ourselves, answering the call: How does joy help us cope with the harsh realities and complexities of life? How does poetry help us move forward? Re: Wild Her is an invitation to catapult into the otherworldly, to dive with the muses, and to resubmerge ourselves in joy.
Reviews
“Shannon Webb-Campbell's nomad-like grazing on the treasures and pleasures of the world is sensuous, hungry, restless; the throat of this poet is wide open, expectant. In swallowing life and earth's marvels, she herself becomes them, and encourages the same of her reader.” —Shani Mootoo, author of Oh Witness Dey!
“These poems are wanderers, boldly straying across the globe (France, Cypress, Mexico, Cuba, California, Newfoundland) and in and out of the past, unafraid of 'strange creature sightings'—seeking them, in fact. They are poems hungry for magic and eager for transport, harkening to Elders and Buddhists, astrology and transatlantic flights, Two-Eyed Seeing and tarot. The transport sought isn’t the sort that offers escape from the world but one that pushes past the dominance of Enlightenment-style reason and opens a person up to mutuality and wonder.” —Sue Sinclair, author of Almost Beauty: New and Selected Poems
Additional Information
112 pages | 6.00" x 8.00" | Paperback
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