Poetry

Flow into a new season in one of Canada’s most celebrated literary landscapes, with Leaf Counter. A lyric decolonial romp through the Ontario’s famed Prince Edward County, Aginjibagwesi (Spinus tristis) draws us through the poetics of the land and the struggles of the poet as decolonizer in this new epic border-crossing collection. Golden witness to the timelessness of land and spirits, Leaf Counter criss-crossed the lands around Ameliasburgh, its ghosts, heroes, and even the poets of Purdy’s A-Frame. Leaf Counter knows of sorrow, struggle, and wends a tale in a braided narrative as he scans "light and steeple” and sees timeless men at the centre and edges of the order of things, Simon Girty, Al Purdy, Charles Bukowski, and even Bret Hart, move and shift in time and place. Leaf Counter is our celestial, Lenape, winged guide of legend and myth. And through his spring enumeration of all things, we garner an understanding of the famed Canadian poet Al Purdy and the lands that he grew from. Witness the collapse of the old repressive order through the eyes of the poet and movements of the mighty little bird.

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148 pages | 6.00" x 9.00" | Paperback

The central theme of this poetry collection revolves around the idea that each individual is shaped by the connections they forge with others throughout their lives. Each poem serves as a tribute to the relationships that influence us, weaving a rich tapestry of shared experiences and emotions. The collection is guiding readers through a journey of reflection and introspection. Each poem follows a distinct outline: it begins with a cherished memory that encapsulates the essence of the relationship, then delves into the significance of that bond and what it has taught us. Next, the poems explore the evolution of these connections—whether they have transformed, faded away, or remain vibrant in our lives. As the verses unfold, they evoke sensory reminders of these individuals—objects, places, or moments that bring them to mind—while also celebrating the qualities we admire in them. The poems culminate in a heartfelt exploration of their lasting impact on our identities and the permanent marks they leave behind. Each poem becomes a mirror, inviting readers to consider their own relationships and the intricate ways in which these connections shape who they are. Through this collection, we are reminded that we are, in many ways, a mosaic of everyone we have loved, learned from, and lost along the way.

Educator & Series Information
This book is part of the Modern Indigenous Voices series.

Additional Information
96 pages | 5.50" x 8.50" | Paperback 

Chief Stacey Laforme, an esteemed Indigenous leader and storyteller, breathes life into every poem and story, drawing upon his deep cultural roots. Rich with the essence of his soul, the poems in Beneath the Surface capture the moments and emotions that have shaped him, offering a poignant exploration of identity, resilience, and hope. Through humour and pain, Laforme invites readers to not just read, but to truly feel the weight and wisdom carried within each verse.

This collection goes beyond poetry, providing rich backstories and leadership insights that contextualize the verses. As in his earlier collections, Living in the Tall Grass and Love, Life, Loss and a little bit of hope, Laforme once again extends an invitation to readers, encouraging them to see the world through Indigenous eyes. Themes of peace, humanity, grief, and trauma are woven throughout the book, creating a tapestry of reflection, healing, and ultimately, hope.

Beneath the Surface serves as both a deeply personal reflection and a call for greater understanding and connection, illuminating the complexities of life through the lens of Indigenous wisdom and storytelling.

At the end of this book, this journey, Laforme seeks to help you better answer the following questions. Who was I, Who am I, and Who do I want to be? As a person, a people, a country, a world, who do we want to be?

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192 pages | 8.50" x 5.50" | Paperback 

Something for the Dark centres Indigenous knowledge to probe the limits of what we know, confront the unknown, and reckon with our place in the world.

Randy Lundy’s newest collection of poetry—the final in a trilogy that began with Blackbird Song and continued with Field Notes for the Self—turns the poem to our relationships with the land, animals, and people, showing how our failures to see and live by the personhood of all other beings in the world, human and non-, leads inevitably to heartbreak.

As Lundy’s poems accumulate like snow on cedar, his recounting of experiences that transcend language invites the reader to bend their understanding and notice what was once unseen—how a red-winged blackbird clings to a swaying reed, how mist rises after rainfall, how dogs keen and howl, how fingers taste bitter after lighting sage, how hunger smarts, how liquor burns, and how the pain survivors carry is not merely their own.

Reviews
“Such longing! ‘These days I wrestle no angels. I wrestle / with words. And no one is saved.’ writes Randy Lundy. In Something for the Dark, he presents tâpwêwina—truths drawn from the hand dealt and the life lived. ‘Nothing is hidden,’ he suggests, if we take the time to observe from a distance and wait in silence.” — Rita Bouvier, author of a beautiful rebellion

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96 pages | 5.51" x 8.50" | Paperback

New poems from award-winning storyteller and poet Joseph Dandurand.

Prolific Kwantlen writer Joseph Dandurand offers his latest poetry collection, following The Punishment and The East Side of It All, which was shortlisted for the 2021 Griffin Poetry Prize.

Building on his legacy as a skilled storyteller, Dandurand continues to write about trauma, love, grief and forgiveness. These poems are about the streets, the East Side, self-pity, spirits and Dandurand’s people, the Kwantlen. As the jury of the 2022 Latner Writers’ Trust Award wrote, “his quotidian reflections read like parables, with startling economy.” After putting this collection down, don’t be surprised to find yourself saying “thank you,” too.

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102 pages | 5.50" x 8.00" | Paperback

An irreverent and playful novella of Metis voices that reflects the complexities of contemporary prairie life

Conor Kerr's 2024 novel Prairie Edge was a finalist for both the Giller Prize and the Atwood Gibson Writers' Trust of Canada Fiction Prize. His latest book, Beaver Hills Forever, takes a riotous, uncompromising look at the intertwined lives of four characters, each an abstract expression of the few paths available to Metis people on the Prairies. In alternating poetic verses, Buddy, Baby Momma, Fancy University Boy, and Aunty Prof share their inner dreams, hardships, delusions of grandeur, and existential plights. While the messy day-to-day is created by their own doing, the lives of these four individuals are doubly compromised by Canada's colonial education system and resource extraction industries.

A beguiling and genre-bending work, Beaver Hills Forever offers a moving, necessary exploration of education, labour, and the dynamic, ever-changing bonds that bring us back to each other. Here is a diverse, funny, pitch-perfect chorus of voices that rings loud and true over the wide prairie landscape.

Reviews
"Not every Metis kid / Needs a sad story," says a character in Conor Kerr's propulsive and deeply entertaining new work, where each bone-clean sentence holds a galaxy of stories in its marrow. Kerr is part of a vital contemporary movement that is reimagining what our literatures can be and what they can do. Beaver Hills Forever is a reminder that laughter and passion are as much a part of the narrative as struggle. In these pages, you'll find voices that demand to be heard, felt, and remembered." — Carleigh Baker, author of Last Woman and Bad Endings

"Much like his prose, Conor Kerr's Beaver Hills Forever imbues the language of everyday Indigenous life with a poetic charm that is just incredibly readable and relatable. This book is truly multitudinous: a love story, an anti-love story, a critique of neoliberalism, an ode to the Prairies, and, above all, proof that even our smallest desires are worthy of sustained poetic consideration." — Billy-Ray Belcourt, author of Coexistence

"Beaver Hills Forever is full of raunch and riot. Conor Kerr's ability to gravitate around the embodied truths of institutional whiteness, class, settler colonization, and the Indigenous (Metis) experience in the moraine of amiskwaciy is rebellious in its desire to not pathologize or rationalize the violent backdrops of its animate setting. With his skilled hand, Kerr makes sure there is "room for [all] in the digital economy of the Future." — Joshua Whitehead, author of Jonny Appleseed

"Aho, fancy reader! Welcome to Conor Kerr's Beaver Hills Forever. We'll laugh, we'll cry. We'll smoke, we'll die. Etc, etc. Beaver Hills Forever is funny, heartfelt, poetic, badass. It's Bald Boy, Goodbye, Sad Story, Indigenous Canon. Etc, etc. Magpie cackles, Metis literatures, Aunty Prof wonders, realizes, smudges, feel-good energy. Fuck all the ongoing bullshit internal politics and academic distortion and just hear the truth, etc, etc." — Jordan Abel, author of Empty Spaces and NISHGA

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88 pages | 6.00" x 9.00" | Paperback

From adventures in Indigenous futurism to tales of first love, the stories and poems of Beyond the Glittering World proclaim and celebrate a rising generation of Native American storytellers.

Beyond the Glittering World brings together twenty emerging and established Native women writers and writers of marginalized genders, including Moniquill Blackgoose, Heid E. Erdrich, A.J. Eversole, Chelesa Hicks, and D. Daye Hunter. Immersing readers in worlds as varied as their authors, this collection presents an array of singular voices at their genre-bending, boundary-breaking, devastating, and joyous best.

Reviews
"An evocative compilation of voices pondering Indigenous futures and the shape of Indigenous love. Beyond the Glittering World holds a healthy dose of gender-bending, genre-challenging, future-hoping might. This anthology is a welcome addition to the field of Indigenous anthologies.”—DEBORAH JACKSON TAFFA, Whiskey Tender

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240 pages | 5.25" x 8.00" | Paperback

Emma LaRocque was born in 1949 in Lac La Biche into a Cree-speaking Métis family. She grew up in a one-room, kerosene-lit log cabin built by her father. At the age of nine, she fought her parents to attend school, where she encountered English and the colonizer’s harmful stereotypes of Indigenous peoples. Confronting the contradictions of colonialism sparked her journey as a writer and scholar, as she sought to understand the dissonance between her identity and the world around her.

The Emma LaRocque Reader is a comprehensive collection of her most significant writings, poetry and prose, offering an intimate window into the mind of one of Canada’s foremost Indigenous scholars. Through her work, LaRocque provides profound insights into the intersections of colonialism, sexism, and racism in Canada, while also critically celebrating the beauty of her community and culture. In the afterword, she reflects on fifty years of challenging the colonial enterprise. A vital contribution to postcolonial literature, The Emma LaRocque Reader intertwines the personal and the political to explore what it means to be human, offering a powerful testament to Indigenous resistance, resilience, and vision.

This collection brings together the works of Métis scholar Emma LaRocque, offering a half-century of her poetry and prose, and shedding new light on Canada, colonialism, and Indigenous resistance.

Educator Information
Chapters
Foreword by Armand Ruffo
Preface by Elaine Coburn
Acknowledgments by Emma LaRocque
Acknowledgments of Permissions to Reprint
Introduction by Elaine Coburn
1975 A Personal Essay on Poverty (Excerpt from Defeathering the Indian)
1983 The Métis in English Canadian Literature
1988 On the Ethics of Publishing Historical Documents
1989 Racism Runs through Canadian Society
1990 Preface: Here Are Our Voices: Who Will Hear?
1990 Geese (poem)
1990 Nostalgia (poem)
1990 “Progress” (poem)
1990 The Red in Winter (poem)
1990 Incongruence (poem)
1990 Loneliness (poem)
1990 Beggar (poem)
1990 Tides, Towns, and Trains
1992 My Hometown, Northern Canada, South Africa (poem)
1993 Violence in Aboriginal Communities
1994 Long Way from Home (poem)
1996 The Colonization of a Native Woman Scholar
1996 When the Other Is Me: Native Writers Confronting Canadian Literature
2001 Native Identity and the Métis: Otehpayimsuak Peoples
2001 From the Land to the Classroom
2004 When the Wild West Is Me
2006 Sweeping (poem)
2006 Sources of Inspiration: The Birth of "For the Love of Words": Aboriginal Writers of Canada
2007 Métis and Feminist
2009 Reflections on Cultural Continuity through Aboriginal Women’s Writings
2010 Native Writers Reconstruct: Pushing Paradigms
2013 For the Love of Place – Not Just Any Place: Selected Métis Writings
2015 “Resist No Longer”: Reflections on Resistance Writing and Teaching
2016 Contemporary Métis Literature: Resistance, Roots, Innovation
2016 Colonialism Lived
2017 Powerlines (poem)
2022 Wehsakehcha, Comics, Shakespeare, and the Dictionary
2023 Afterword
Index

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348 pages | 6.00" x 9.00" | Paperback

you are only here

to learn from those who came before

and make space

for those who come after

Procession: a line of people moving in the same direction; a formal ceremony or celebration, as in a wedding, a funeral, a religious parade. Bestseller and Governor General's Award-winner katherena vermette's third collection presents a series of poems reaching into what it means to be at once a descendant and a future ancestor, exploring the connections we have with one another and ourselves, amongst friends, and within families and Nations.

In frank, heartfelt poems that move through body sovereignty and ancestral dreams, and from '80s childhood nostalgia to welcoming one's own babies, vermette unreels the story of a child, a parent, and soon, an elder, living in a prairie place that has always existed, though looks much different to her now. This book is about being one small part of a large genealogy. A lineage is a line, and the procession, whether in celebration or in mourning, is ongoing. procession delves into what it means to make poems and to be an artist, to be born into a body, to carry it all, and, if you're very lucky, age.

be a good ancestor

be a good kid

Reviews
"The poems in procession are remarkable: spare but generous, both grounded and skillfully drawn. With her signature musicality, insight, and wit, vermette reminds us that we - like our bodies and the earth, like our histories and our shared, threatened future - are essentially, impossibly intertwined." -Chimwemwe Undi, Governor General's Award-winning author of Scientific Marvel?

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112 pages | 5.50" x 8.50" | Paperback

A beautifully illustrated edition of Poet Laureate Joy Harjo’s poem “Washing My Mother’s Body,” which offers a way through grief when the loss appears unbearable.

As I wash my mother’s face, I tell her
how beautiful she is, how brave, how her beauty and bravery
live on in her grandchildren. Her face is relaxed, peaceful.
Her earth memory body has not left yet,
but when I see her the next day, embalmed and in the casket
in the funeral home, it will be gone.
Where does it go?

Through lyrical prose and evocative watercolor illustrations by award-winning Muscogee artist Dana Tiger, Washing My Mother’s Body explores the complexity of a daughter’s grief as she reflects on the joys and sorrows of her mother’s life. She lays her mother to rest in the landscape of her memory, honoring the hands that raised her, the body that protected her, and the legs that carried her mother through adversity.

Moving, comforting, and deeply emotional, Washing My Mother’s Body is a tender look at mother-daughter relationships, the complexity of grieving the loss of a parent, and the enduring love of those left behind.

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80 pages | 5.79" x 7.81" | Hardcover 

Mother, Can I Say it Now? is a compelling collection of poems that delve into the beauty and depth of Indigenous poetry. It reflects the essence of everyday life and captures the spirit of belonging. The poems in this collection explore themes of identity, culture, and connection to the land. They offer a unique perspective that resonates with readers from all walks of life. From The Next Pretend-Indian to Things Abandoned in the Night, each poem tells a story that is both compelling and thought-provoking. These captivating verses are a tribute to the resilience and creativity of Indigenous voices.

Educator & Series Information
This book is part of the Modern Indigenous Voices series.

Additional Information
88 pages | 5.50" x 8.50" | Paperback 

High Noon Neptune is a powerful poetry collection that delves into important issues of loss, love, class, and capitalism. Throughout this book, the reader is taken on a journey of survival, where the intersections of identity and oppression are explored with clarity and reverence. The poems shed light on the complexities of living in a society that is rife with discrimination and inequality, and the battles that individuals face to survive within these intersecting systems. This book fearlessly navigates through societal and personal struggles with a sharp wit and bold defiance. With each poem, David Groulx confronts and challenges the societal norms and structures that perpetuate injustice and inequality. High Noon Neptune offers a raw and unapologetic perspective on the realities of navigating life as a marginalized individual. This poetry collection is a powerful testament to the resilience and strength of those who refuse to be silenced and continue to fight for survival.

Educator & Series Information
This book is part of the Modern Indigenous Voices series.

Additional Information
88 pages | 5.50" x 8.50" | Paperback 

A fiery second collection of poetry from the acclaimed Indigenous New Zealand writer that U.S. Poet Laureate Joy Harjo calls, “One of the most startling and original poets of her generation.”

Tayi Tibble returns on the heels of her incendiary debut with a bold new follow-up. Barbed and erotic, vulnerable and searching, Rangikura asks readers to think about our relationship to desire and exploitation. Moving between hotel lobbies and all-night clubs, these poems chronicle life spent in spaces that are stalked by transaction and reward. “I grew up tacky and hungry and dazzling,” Tibble writes. “Mum you should have tied me/to the ground./Instead I was given/to this city freely.”

Here is a poet staking out a sense of freedom on her own terms in times that very often feel like end times. Tibble’s range of forms and sounds are dazzling. Written with Māori moteatea, purakau, and karakia (chants, legends, and prayers) in mind, Rangikura explores the way the past comes back, even when she tries to turn her back on it. “I was forced to remember that,/wherever I go,/even if I go nowhere at all,/I am still a descendent of mountains.”

At once a coming-of-age and an elegy to the traumas born from colonization, especially the violence enacted against indigenous women, Rangikura interrogates not only the poets’ pain, but also that of her ancestors. The intimacy of these poems will move readers to laughter and tears. Speaking to herself, sometimes to the reader, these poems arc away from and return to their ancestral roots to imagine the end of the world and a new day. They invite us into the swirl of nostalgia and exhaustion produced in the pursuit of an endless summer. (“My heart goes out like an abandoned swan boat/ghosting along a lake”). They are a new highpoint from a writer of endless talent. 

Reviews
"When Tayi Tibble was eight, she decided she’d be a writer...Despite a slew of accomplishment at just 28—including, but not limited to, being the first Māori writer published in The New Yorker and an appearance in in Lorde’s Solar Power music video—she remains miraculously humble....Rangikura, her incendiary second collection, hits bookshelves this week in the States...[In it] Tibble nimbly zig zags from comedic lines about the Kardashians to reflections on ancestral trauma, colonization and love affairs." —Eloise King-Clements, Interview Magazine

Additional Information
96 pages | 6.19" x 8.66" | Hardcover 

For over twenty years, Nehiyawak-Metis artist and author John Brady McDonald’s day job has been working with youth. Over half of that time was spent as a Frontline Youth Outreach Worker on the streets of Prince Albert, Saskatchewan. During that time, John would write down his thoughts and feelings on scraps of paper and in little black hardcover notebooks, chronicling the struggles and traumas of the youth he worked with and which he himself had also experienced. Never being quite the right fit for his other poetry books, John took these poems and hid them away for years, until now. Recently rediscovered in his archives, John has compiled them, using a 54-year-old typewriter, into a work which gives voice to the experiences and resilience of those youth, along with his own experiences, thoughts and recollections of a poet in the midst of a turbulent moment in time amongst the concrete and asphalt of the city.

Educator & Series Information
This book is part of the Modern Indigenous Voices series.

Additional Information
88 pages | 5.50" x 8.50" | Paperback 

Homecoming is a poetry collection that reflects our human journey as we grow and learn, and author’s personal journey through childhood, marriage, divorce, parenthood, and parents’ old age, as well as the author’s quest to reclaim and celebrate her Native heritage. The poems in Homecoming are grouped according to the four directions of the Medicine Wheel: East for Beginnings, South for Innocence, West for Going Within, North for Elder and Wisdom, plus three poems for the Centre, the Great Mystery.

Educator & Series Information
This book is part of the Modern Indigenous Voices series.

Additional Information
88 pages | 5.50" x 8.50" | Paperback 

"Never let anything or anyone stop you from following where your Spirit says it belongs. . ."

Spirit exists in everything on Mother Earth. If we are open to it, Spirit may guide us through even the darkest of moments.

In this genre-defying blend of poetry and story, Ojibway and Mohawk Elder Dawn Smoke shares all that lives within her heart, mind, and soul. As a young girl confronted with the anger and pain of being scooped from her birth family, Dawn bravely discovers her truth and a path towards healing. She is unwavering in her honesty, a protector of Mother Earth, and a fierce advocate against the oppression of Indigenous people.

Reclaiming what was taken is not an easy feat, yet in doing so, Dawn illuminates the Spirit all around us. This striking memoir, told in spoken word, speaks to the devastating realities of colonization and radiates with the resilience found within culture and community.

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120 pages | 5.50" x 8.00" | Paperback 

Featuring the voices of both new and acclaimed Indigenous writers and edited by bestselling Muscogee author Cynthia Leitich Smith, this collection of interconnected stories serves up laughter, love, Native pride, and the world’s best frybread.

The road to Sandy June's Legendary Frybread Drive-In slips through every rez and alongside every urban Native hangout. The menu offers a rotating feast, including traditional eats and tasty snacks. But Sandy June's serves up more than food: it hosts live music, movie nights, unexpected family reunions, love long lost, and love found again.

That big green-and-gold neon sign beckons to teens of every tribal Nation, often when they need it most.

Featuring stories and poems by: Kaua Mahoe Adams, Marcella Bell, Angeline Boulley, K. A. Cobell, A. J. Eversole, Jen Ferguson, Eric Gansworth, Byron Graves, Kate Hart, Christine Hartman Derr, Karina Iceberg, Cheryl Isaacs, Darcie Little Badger, David A. Robertson, Andrea L. Rogers, Cynthia Leitich Smith, and Brian Young.

Reviews
"There's a lot of warmth and gratitude to revel in...Various characters thread through each other’s stories, allowing many of the players more depth and nuance had they only been in one tale, and encouraging the readers to make the thematic connections in cultural identities that are both individually specific and community-wide." — Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books

"17 Indigenous writers create a web of entertaining, intertwined stories in this uplifting and unusual anthology, ideal for the YA reader who longs for connection and authenticity. Themes of displacement and loneliness, as well as the importance of connection to family, friends, and tribe, permeate the entries, making the collection relevant and accessible for teen readers of any background. As Cheryl Isaacs says in "Heart Berry," "One way or another, Sandy June's never fail[s]." — Shelf Awareness

"The literary conceit that unifies these stories is a magical “NDN Country” frybread drive-in that serves up Native comfort food and wisdom, a “collective dream” where young people in need of connection or healing find themselves among an intertribal community of all ages...many stories mention historical events and all of them touch on family heritage, they also feel quite of-the-moment." — Horn Book Magazine

Educator Information
Recommended for ages 13+.

This collection of interconnected stories features voices of new and acclaimed Indigenous writers.

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352 pages | 5.50" x 8.25" | Hardcover 

An acclaimed young poet explores her identity as a twenty-first-century Indigenous woman. Poem by poem, Tibble carves out a bold new way of engaging history, of straddling modernity and ancestry, desire and exploitation.

Intimate, moving, virtuosic, and hilarious, Tayi Tibble is one of the most exciting new voices in poetry today. In Poūkahangatus (pronounced “Pocahontas”), her debut volume, Tibble challenges a dazzling array of mythologies—Greek, Māori, feminist, kiwi—peeling them apart, respinning them in modern terms. Her poems move from rhythmic discussions of the Kardashians, sugar daddies, and Twilight to exquisite renderings of the natural world and precise emotions (“The lump in her throat swelled like a sea that threatened to take him from her, and she had to swallow hard”). Tibble is also a master narrator of teenage womanhood, its exhilarating highs and devastating lows; her high-camp aesthetics correlate to the overflowing beauty, irony, and ruination of her surroundings.

These are warm, provocative, and profoundly original poems, written by a woman for whom diving into the wreck means taking on new assumptions—namely, that it is not radical to write from a world in which the effects of colonization, land, work, and gender are obviously connected. Along the way, Tibble scrutinizes perception and how she as a Māori woman fits into trends, stereotypes, and popular culture. With language that is at once colorful, passionate, and laugh-out-loud funny, Poūkahangatus is the work of one of our most daring new poets.

Reviews
“This chatty, winsome debut by a young New Zealand poet mines family history, Maori myth and the residue of pop culture to fashion a striking sensibility.”—The New York Times Book Review

“Tibble writes wittily of the hunger games of adolescence. . . . However lost their youthful personas, these wise poems know exactly where they are heading.”—David Wheatley, The Guardian

“Tibble’s smart, sexy, slang-studded verse is fanciful and dramatic, reveling in the pains and the pleasures of contemporary young womanhood yet undergirded by an acute sense of history. Her voice remains sure-footed across many registers, and the book, at its best, functions as an atlas for learning to explore the world on one’s own terms.”—The New Yorker

“In Tibble’s seismic debut, the young poet’s rollicking, indignant, and invigorating narratives contend with history and navigate what it means to be millennial, female, and of Māori descent. Tibble stares unblinkingly at bigotry, her ferocity consuming the male, white, evangelical gaze she encounters. . . . Tibble’s kinetic use of language makes this an exciting and memorable debut.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

Additional Information
96 pages | 5.85" x 8.34" | Paperback 

“Canada rejected our applications for enrolment in the Qalipu First Nation. Initially, I was relieved by the rejection. I’d watched my hometown divide itself — are you Mi′kmaq or settler? Mi′kmaq or not Mi′kmaq enough?”

Centred around the Newfoundland Mi'kmaq experience in the wake of the controversial Qalipu First Nation enrolment process, Island wades through the fracture and mistrust that continues to linger in many communities. In this new collection, Douglas Walbourne-Gough expands upon issues of identity and history that he introduced in Crow Gulch, offering a deeply personal and equally beautiful exploration of Mi'kmaw and Newfoundland identity.

Walbourne-Gough’s narrative poems trace the formation of identity, not through status documentation, but through its deeper roots in childhood memories, family, spirituality, and dreams. Throughout this collection, he approaches life in fragments — snuggling into his nan’s sealskin snowsuit, learning Mi'kmaq from an app, or the myriad of complex emotions that come with receiving a status card — and watches them transform into pieces of an everlasting puzzle. Island reckons with an often-ignored, yet persistent, effect of colonialism — fractured identities.

Additional Information
80 pages | 5.50" x 8.50" | Paperback

The Sky Woman has returned to bring down the patriarchy!

This book is about a poet who may or may not be going crazy, who is just trying to survive in Winnipeg, where Indigenous people, especially women, are being disappeared. She is talking to a crow who may or may not be a trickster, and who brings a very important message: Sky Woman has returned, and she is ready to take down the patriarchy.

This is poetry, prose and dialogue about the rise and return of the matriarch. It’s a call to resistance, a manifesto to the female self.

Cree poet and broadcaster Rosanna Deerchild is an important voice for our time. Her poems – angry, funny, sad – demand a new world for Indigenous women.

Awards

• 2025 Indigenous Voices Awards - Poetry in English Award

Additional Information
96 pages | 5.00" x 8.00" | Paperback

Journey to the southernmost tip of the territories held by Canada. North of Middle Island opens with a collection of individual poems that capture the spirit of the relatively isolated, sparsely populated community of Pelee Island.

The pieces explore contemporary Indigenous experience in the natural and built environments of the island and surrounding waters. The book concludes with an epic, "rarely true" narrative of modern-day warriors, told in traditional Anglo-Saxon style-a new Lenape myth of how Deerwoman (Ahtuhxkwe) comes to Pelee Island. The events of this epic tale are loosely based on the infamous professional wrestler and actor Rowdy Roddy Piper's time on the island and Wrestlemania XII, Piper's notorious "Backlot Brawl" with fellow wrestler Goldust (Nkuli Punkw). Follow acclaimed Moravian of the Thames First Nation poet D.A. Lockhart on this lyrical, epic journey into the unique culture and landscapes that lie just North of Middle Island.

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93 pages | 5.50" x 8.50"

The Secwépemc term le estcwicwéy̓ (the missing) was given by Secwépemc elders who dedicated their knowledge and time to guide the community through the hell they were forced to endure in May 2021. Garry Gottfriedson’s The Flesh of Ice picks up the thread of his 2021 collection, Bent Back Tongue, describing the history and relationship of Indigenous people in Canada with the Canadian government and the Catholic church. Here is the story of those who survived Kamloops Indian Residential School (KIRS), and stories of descendants of KIRS who remembered "the missing” in the wake of the discovery of unmarked graves at the KIRS. Here, in hauntingly visceral poems, are the living conditions, policies and practices of the school itself, the stories of those who lived there, and the names of practitioners of the school, called out and cursed. Lastly, personal stories are given space to reclaim the narrative, taking readers on a journey of resilience, survival, pain and joy.

Reviews
"Drawing on the work of the late legal scholar Patricia Monture-Angus, I find fitting words for this book and for the former students of KIRS: first we were victims, then we were survivors and now we are warriors. Those warriors have now become teachers—teachers for those who learn to listen to the voices in this book."—from the prologue by Celia Haig-Brown

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126 pages | 5.50" x 8.00" | Paperback

Anishinaabe author Lois Beardslee shares how a life is lived within two cultures, revealing a worldview shaped by language and customs and expressed through verse both playful and somber. This collection of poems is a lattice of traditional wisdom, wordplay, and cunning modernity that forms a distinctive creative voice. Experiences of duality overlay an Anishinaabe annual cycle, emphasizing the practical nature of traditions and their dependence upon the landscape in which they develop over time. Poems like "Waatebagaagiizis" and "Gidanimibiisaa na" reveal the fortitude that maintains traditions against the encroaching backdrop of modernity. Others such as "Namegosag" and "Minowichige" playfully connect a moment's experience to the everyday practices that have endured, many through the author's own eyes, and others through kin spanning generations and cultures. These poems not only evoke a sense of spirit that transcends boundaries but they also bear traditional knowledge, notions of the seasons, and conceptions of how the spirit is shaped by nature.

Educator Information
Young Adult Nonfiction

Additional Information
80 pages | 6.00" x 9.00" | Paperback

In The Dialogues: The Song of Francis Pegahmagabow, award-winning author Armand Garnet Ruffo brings to life not only the story of the famed WWI Indigenous sniper, but also the complexities of telling Indigenous stories. From Manitoulin Island to the trenches of WWI to the stage, Ruffo moves seamlessly through time in these poems, taking the reader on a captivating journey through Pegahmagabow’s story and onto the creation of Sounding Thunder, the opera based on his life. Throughout, Ruffo uses the Ojibwe concept of two-eyed seeing, which combines the strengths of western and Indigenous ways of knowing, and invites the reader to do the same, particularly through the inclusion of the Anishinaabemowin language within the collection. These are poems that challenge western conventions of thinking, that celebrate hope and that show us a new way to see the world.

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120 pages | 6.00" x 9.00" | Paperback

This is a book about grief, death and longing. It’s about the gristle that lodges itself deep into one’s gums, between incisors and canines.

Teeth details not only the symptoms of colonization, but also the foundational and constitutive asymmetries that allow for it to proliferate and reproduce itself. Dallas Hunt grapples with the material realities and imaginaries Indigenous communities face, as well as the pockets of livability that they inhabit just to survive. Still this collection seeks joy in the everyday, in the flourishing of Indigenous Peoples in the elsewhere, in worlds to come.

Nestling into the place between love and ruin, Teeth traces the collisions of love undone and being undone by love, where “the hope is to find an ocean nested in shoulders—to reside there when the tidal waves come. and then love names the ruin.”

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112 pages | 5.50" x 8.00" | Paperback

In these poems, E. McGregor combines the lore of family history with personal memory, vividly parsing patterns of inheritance, particularly through the maternal line.

What Fills Your House Like Smoke begins and ends at the deathbed of the writer's Metis grandmother. In between, McGregor composes an incomplete and wildly imaginative biography of the grandmother, interrogated by family photographs, stories, and the scant paper trail she left behind.

McGregor sifts through the complexities of motherhood, daughterhood, anxiety, intimate relationships and addiction, weaving family history with memory to make sense of what is carried on. Especially affecting are poems about childhood, and the people who disappear from a child's life, and the struggle to live as a societal outsider, finding strength in self-definition and the power of narrative.

As these poems unfold, they move us toward an understanding of maternal inheritance, shifting identities, forgiveness, and finally love.

Reviews
"There is a rawness and tender vulnerability in the re-membering of a mother's mother's life in the thematic dotted lines, hardlines and blurred lines of McGregor's poetry. For bodies under duress, survival is instinctive and passed on, and a breakthrough from the trauma endured is made possible in an honest remembering to liberate oneself." -- Rita Bouvier, author of a beautiful rebellion

"What Fills Your House Like Smoke is a staggering collection . . . technically agile and thematically nuanced. McGregor's poems have the effect of flame, sucking the air out of the room; of a soothing hand on your chest, reminding you to breathe. An indelible debut." -- Hollay Ghadery, author of Rebellion Box

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90 pages | 6.00" x 8.00" | Paperback

“We should not have to change to fit into society the world should adapt to embrace our uniqueness.” -- Chief Stacey Laforme

Chief Stacey Laforme breathes life into every poem and story he shares, drawing from his own experiences. Rich with the essence of his soul, the poems in this book capture the moments and emotions that have shaped him. His desire is for readers to not just read, but to truly feel the humour and pain intertwined in these poems. Much like in Living in the Tall Grass, this latest poetry collection invites non-Indigenous people to see through the eyes of Indigenous people with topics of peace and humanity, as well as grief, trauma ... and hope.

Reviews
"Thought provoking, healing meditations. Giima Laforme writes from his perspective as a son, father, husband, community leader, but most of all as a human being. He invites us to walk with him, and to see the world as he sees it. Not only is this an invitation we should accept, but it is also a beautiful and generous gift." — Kevin Hearn, musician

"Chief Stacey Laforme writes with the motive of love, and poetry is his instrument. When considering the unmarked graves at residential schools, Chief Laforme’s poem ‘Debwewin—Truth’ freezes you with the line, “She felt the shovels enter her body.” But as you will see, there is always hope. Chief has both the scalpel and the suture. He cuts, then he cures." —Ron MacLean, broadcaster

Additional Information
160 pages | 8.50" x 5.50" | Paperback | 3 b&w illustrations 

United States Poet Laureate Joy Harjo gathers the work of more than 160 poets, representing nearly 100 indigenous nations, into the first historically comprehensive Native poetry anthology.

This landmark anthology celebrates the indigenous peoples of North America, the first poets of this country, whose literary traditions stretch back centuries. Opening with a blessing from Pulitzer Prize–winner N. Scott Momaday, the book contains powerful introductions from contributing editors who represent the five geographically organized sections. Each section begins with a poem from traditional oral literatures and closes with emerging poets, ranging from Eleazar, a seventeenth-century Native student at Harvard, to Jake Skeets, a young Diné poet born in 1991, and including renowned writers such as Luci Tapahanso, Natalie Diaz, Layli Long Soldier, and Ray Young Bear. When the Light of the World Was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through offers the extraordinary sweep of Native literature, without which no study of American poetry is complete.

Reviews
This anthology is revelatory and stunning.… It shows the remarkable strength and diversity of Native poetry, which vitalizes all of American poetry. It is essential reading.—Arthur Sze, National Book Award–winning author of Sight Lines

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352 pages | 6.14" x 9.29" | Paperback

Ceremony, community and connection - the poems of Once the Smudge is Lit carry the reader into deeply spiritual elements of Nishnaabe/Ojibwe culture. Co-written by Cole Forrest and Kelsey Borgford, the poetry of Once the Smudge is Lit highlights the Indigenous experience in post-colonial times through explorations of themes ranging from love to community. Bogford's and Forrest's verses seek to open a multidimensional window into the experience of being a contemporary Nishaabe. A profound sense of movement, connection, and continuity is emphasized by Tessa Pizzale's beautifully evocative illustrations, which include a line of smudge smoke that flows from page to page from beginning to end.

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50 pages | 5.50" x 8.50" | 50 Illustrations | Paperback

Aided by Grandmother Spider, Star Woman discovers the Hole-in-the-Sky, opening a pathway for the Star People to experience the wonder of life on earth. But the world falls into the hands of the Paper People, jeopardizing the sacred harmony between nature and the cosmos. And so Little Spirit, a young boy, must search for meaning and find redemption in the care of Grandmother Moon.

An epic narrative, The Star Poems explores the black hole of colonial history—Residential Schools, the loss of the father, youth suicide—and the vital role of women in reclaiming our traditional knowledge, the teachings that stitch together the fabric of the universe.

The Star Poems creatively engages Cree oral tradition in a new way, connecting Indigenous spirituality and quantum physics to honour and adapt some of our most ancient stories about the origins of life and our place in the universe. Presented in both English and Cree, The Star Poems is a timely contribution to the revitalization of the Cree language—and the fascinating world of star stories.

Educator Information
Recommended for ages 15+

Additional Information
132 pages | 6.00" x 9.00" | Paperback

The New Wascana Anthology is named for the Cree word "oskana," meaning "bones,"* but this anthology is no literary graveyard. It will introduce you to stories, poems, and essays that can be discussed over drinks, or used to impress friends years after leaving English 100 behind.

Offering a taster's choice of the best Canadian writing, with a special focus on Aboriginal and Prairie writers, this anthology includes pieces selected to introduce you to the English literary canon. Going back hundreds of years, the oldest poems included here have no known author, while the youngest writer is a recent university graduate.

Building on the bones of the canon (including all of Canada's Man Booker Prize-winners and newest Nobel Laureate), The New Wascana Anthology features writers such as Flannery O'Connor, Thomas King, Carmine Starnino, and Ursula K. Le Guin who will challenge your worldview. Most importantly, this anthology is about turning the page, opening your mind, and revelling in the pleasures of reading.

*The bones referred to are the bones of plains bison, a species that once numbered in the tens of millions on the Great Plains.

Educator Information
Contains works from Indigenous and non-Indigenous writers.

Table of Contents

Preface

Poetry

Anonymous
Summer is icumen in
Sir Patrick Spens
Mary Hamilton

Geoffrey Chaucer (ca. 1343–1400)
from The Canterbury Tales
Excerpts from General Prologue

Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503–1542)
          The Long Love, That in My Thought Doth Harbour

Sir Walter Ralegh (ca. 1552–1618)
          The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd

Edmund Spenser (ca. 1552–1599)
from Amoretti
          30. My love is like to ice
          75. One day I wrote her name

Sir Philip Sidney (1554–1586)
from Astrophel and Stella
          59. Dear, why make you more of a dog than me?

Michael Drayton (1563–1631)
from Idea
          61. Since there’s no help, come let us kiss and part

Christopher Marlowe (1564–1593)
          The Passionate Shepherd to His Love
 
William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
from Sonnets
          18. Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
          20. A woman’s face, with nature’s own hand painted
          116. Let me not to the marriage of true minds
          130. My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun
from As You Like It
          All the world’s a stage
 
John Donne (1572–1631)
          A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning
          Death be not proud
          The Bait
          The Flea

Ben Jonson (1572–1637)
          Epigram XXII: On My First Daughter
          Epigram XLV: On My First Son
          Song: To Celia

George Herbert (1593–1633)
          Love (III)
 
John Milton (1608–1674)
          When I Consider How My Light Is Spent
from Paradise Lost, Book 1
          The Invocation

Anne Bradstreet (1612–1672)
          Before the Birth of One of Her Children
          The Author to Her Book

Andrew Marvell (1621–1678)
          To His Coy Mistress
 
Anne Finch, Countess of Winchelsea (1661–1720)
          To the Nightingale
          A Letter to Daphnis, April 2, 1685

Alexander Pope (1688–1744)
          The Rape of the Lock

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689–1762)
          Addressed to—

Thomas Gray (1716–1771)
          Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard

Christopher Smart (1722–1771)
from Jubilate Agno
          My Cat Jeoffry
 
William Blake (1757–1827)
from Songs of Innocence
          The Chimney Sweeper
          The Lamb
from Songs of Experience
          A Poison Tree
          London
          The Chimney Sweeper

William Wordsworth (1770–1850)
          A slumber did my spirit seal
          Composed Upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802
          I wandered lonely as a cloud
          The world is too much with us

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834)
          Kubla Khan
 
George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788–1824)
          She Walks in Beauty
          The Destruction of Sennacherib

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822)
          Ozymandias

John Keats (1795–1821)
          La Belle Dame Sans Merci
          When I have fears that I may cease to be

Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–1892)
          Ulysses
 
Robert Browning (1812–1889)
          Porphyria’s Lover
          My Last Duchess
 
Emily Brontë (1818–1848)
          Remembrance

Walt Whitman (1819–1892)
          When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d
 
Matthew Arnold (1822–1888)
          Dover Beach

George Meredith (1828–1909)
from Modern Love
          17. At dinner, she is hostess, I am host

Emily Dickinson (1830–1866)
          F479. Because I could not stop for Death
          F591. I heard a Fly buzz—when I died
          F620. Much Madness is divinest Sense
          F1096. A narrow Fellow in the Grass
          F1263. Tell all the Truth but tell it slant

Lewis Carroll (1832–1898)
          Jabberwocky

Thomas Hardy (1840–1928)
          The Ruined Maid
          The Convergence of the Twain
          The Workbox

Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–1889)
          God’s Grandeur
          Pied Beauty
          The Windhover

A. E. Housman (1859–1936)
from A Shropshire Lad
          XIX. To An Athlete Dying Young

Sir Charles G. D. Roberts (1860–1943)
          Tantramar Revisited

Archibald Lampman (1861–1899)
          Heat

William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
          The Second Coming
          Leda and the Swan
          Crazy Jane Talks with the Bishop

Edwin Arlington Robinson (1869–1935)
          Miniver Cheevy

Robert Frost (1874–1963)
          After Apple-Picking
          Mending Wall
          Nothing Gold Can Stay
          The Silken Tent

William Carlos Williams (1883–1963)
          The Red Wheelbarrow
          This is Just to Say
          Pictures from Brueghel

D. H. Lawrence (1885–1930)
          Piano
          Snake

Ezra Pound (1885–1972)
          In a Station of the Metro
          The River Merchant’s Wife: A Letter

Isaac Rosenberg (1890–1918)
          Break of Day in the Trenches

Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892–1950)
          Elegy before Death
          What lips my lips have kissed

Wilfred Owen (1893–1918)
          Dulce et Decorum Est

e.e. cummings (1894–1963)
          “next to of course god america i
          anyone lived in a pretty how town

F. R. Scott (1899–1985)
          Lakeshore
 
Langston Hughes (1902–1967)
          The Negro Speaks of Rivers
          Harlem

A. J. M. Smith (1902–1980)
          The Lonely Land
          Far West

Stevie Smith (1902–1971)
          Not Waving but Drowning

Earle Birney (1904–1995)
          Anglo-Saxon Street

W. H. Auden (1907–1973)
          Musée des Beaux-Arts

Theodore Roethke (1908–1963)
          My Papa’s Waltz

A. M. Klein (1909–1972)
          Heirloom
          The Rocking Chair

Dorothy Livesay (1909–1996)
          Green Rain

Elizabeth Bishop (1911–1979)
          In the Waiting Room

Irving Layton (1912–2006)
          The Birth of Tragedy

Dylan Thomas (1914–1953)
          Fern Hill
          Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night

P. K. Page (1916–2010)
          After Rain
          Planet Earth
 
Robert Lowell (1917–1977)
          For the Union Dead

Miriam Waddington (1917–2004)
          Advice to the Young

Raymond Souster (1921–2012)
          The Lilac Poem
 
Elizabeth Brewster (1922–2012)
          The Night Grandma Died

Eli Mandel (1922–1992)
          Houdini

Anne Szumigalski (1926–1999)
          It Wasn’t a Major Operation

Don Coles (b. 1927)
          Collecting Pictures
 
Robert Kroetsch (1927–2011)
          Meditation on Tom Thomson

Rita Joe (1932–2007)
          Axe Handles for Sale
          I Lost My Talk

Sylvia Plath (1932–1963)
          Daddy

Alden Nowlan (1933–1983)
          The Bull Moose

Leonard Cohen (b. 1934)
          A Kite Is a Victim
          Suzanne

Robert Currie (b. 1937)
          Young Boy, Fleeing

Glen Sorestad (b. 1937)
          Ten Years
          Now That I’m Up

John Newlove (1938–2003)
          The Double-Headed Snake

Margaret Atwood (b. 1939)
          Backdrop Addresses Cowboy
          The Nature of Gothic
          This Is a Photograph of Me

Seamus Heaney (1939–2013)
          Bog Queen
          Digging
          The Names of the Hare

Patrick Lane (b. 1939)
          Mountain Oysters

Gary Hyland (1940–2011)
from Arguments in the Garden of Prayer
          1. So many frogs
          14. The first sounds

Beth Brant (b. 1941)
          for all my Grandmothers

Robert Hass (b. 1941)
          Consciousness

Gwendolyn MacEwen (1941–1987)
          Manzini: Escape Artist

Marie Annharte Baker (b. 1942)
          Pretty Tough Skin Woman

Louise Glück (b. 1943)
          Illuminations

Michael Ondaatje (b. 1943)
          The Cinnamon Peeler
          White Dwarfs

Dennis Cooley (b. 1944)
          how there in the plaid light she played with his affections plied them spikes from his heart she stood by pliers in hand he has his pride

Craig Raine (b. 1944)
          A Martian Sends a Postcard Home

Tom Wayman (b. 1945)
          Did I Miss Anything?
 
Linda Hogan (b. 1947)
          Cities Behind Glass

Lorna Crozier (b. 1948)
          The Dirty Thirties
          Poem about Nothing
from The Sex Lives of Vegetables
          Radishes
          Lettuce
          Cauliflower

Beth Cuthand (b. 1949)
          Four Songs for the Fifth Generation

Kathleen Wall (b. 1950)
          Morning Nocturne

Joy Harjo (b. 1951)
          She Had Some Horses

Gerald Hill (b. 1951)
          Becoming and Going: An Oldsmobile Story

Di Brandt (b. 1952)
          completely seduced

Louise Halfe (b. 1953)
          She Told Me

Louise Erdrich (b. 1954)
          Dear John Wayne
          Indian Boarding School: The Runaways
          Jacklight

Jeanette Lynes (b. 1956)
          The Last Interview with Bettie Page

Anne Simpson (b. 1956)
          Grammar Exercise

George Elliott Clarke (b. 1960)
          Blank Sonnet

Michael Crummey (b. 1965)
          Her Mark

Gregory Scofield (b. 1966)
          His Flute, My Ears

Karen Solie (b. 1966)
          Parasitology

Randy Lundy (b. 1967)
          Bear
          Ghost Dance

Stephanie Bolster (b. 1969)
          To Dolly

Carmine Starnino (b. 1970)
          Pepino’s Poem, “Growing Up in Naples”
          Rope Husbandry

Daniel Scott Tysdal (b. 1978)
          Metro

Cassidy McFadzean (b. 1989)
          I smile earwide

Short Fiction

Sherman Alexie (b. 1966)
          The Approximate Size of My Favourite Tumour

Margaret Atwood (b. 1939)
          My Last Duchess

Sandra Birdsell (b. 1942)
          Disappearances

Raymond Carver (1938–1988)
          Cathedral

William Faulkner (1897–1962)
          A Rose for Emily

Richard Ford (b. 1944)
          Sweethearts

Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860–1935)
          The Yellow Wall-paper

James Joyce (1882–1941)
          Araby

Thomas King (b. 1943)
          A Seat in the Garden

Ursula K. Le Guin (b. 1929)
          The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas

Alexander MacLeod (b. 1972)
          Miracle Mile

Alistair MacLeod (1936-2014)
          The Boat

Katherine Mansfield (1888–1923)
          The Garden-Party

Yann Martel (b. 1963)
          The Facts Behind the Helsinki Roccamatios

Rohinton Mistry (b. 1952)
          Swimming Lessons

Ken Mitchell (b. 1940)
          The Great Electrical Revolution

Alice Munro (b. 1931)
          The Bear Came over the Mountain

Flannery O’Connor (1925–1964)
          A Good Man Is Hard to Find

Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849)
          The Cask of Amontillado

Eden Robinson (b. 1968)
          Traplines

Gloria Sawai (1932–2011)
          The Day I Sat with Jesus on the Sundeck and a Wind Came Up and Blew My Kimono Open and He Saw My Breasts

Guy Vanderhaeghe (b. 1951)
          Dancing Bear

Dianne Warren (b. 1950)
          Bone Garden

Critical Prose

Stephen Jay Gould (1941–2002)
          Evolution as Fact and Theory

Trevor Herriot (b. 1958)
from Grass, Sky, Song: Promise and Peril in the World of Grassland Birds
          A Way Home

Barbara Kingsolver (b. 1955)
          Setting Free the Crabs

Don McKay (b. 1942)
          Baler Twine: Thoughts on Ravens, Home, and Nature Poetry

Jonathan Swift (1667–1745)
          A Modest Proposal

Copyright Notices

Index of Authors and Titles

Index of First Lines of Poetry

Additional Information
554 pages | 6.00" x 9.00" | Paperback

Motherhood, trauma, and familial history are woven together into a powerful collection from the award-winning author of What Became My Grieving Ceremony. Beginning with a revelation of familial sexual abuse, Building a Nest from the Bones of My People charts the impact of this revelation on the speaker. From the pain of estrangement to navigating first-time motherhood in the midst of a family crisis, Morgan explores the complexities of generational and secondary abuse, intertwined as they are with the impacts of colonization.

Reviews
"Cara-Lyn Morgan offers not only loss, grief, and anger in this powerful collection, but also resolve, resistance, and reckoning—with the past, with what we bequeath our children, and the intentionality of those decisions. A brilliant and resonant meditation on becoming a mother and what it takes to build a new nest from the salvage of what’s been given to us. 'Burn the sage. / we’re done.'"—Lisa Bird-Wilson, author of Probably Ruby

"With her new collection, Cara-Lyn Morgan, demonstrates the lyrical alchemy of transforming ancestral pain into poetic gold through the unflinching art of truth-telling. These poems are raw as nerve endings, encapsulating wisdom enduring as teeth and bones. They are tender, well-crafted, and fearless—reminding us how speaking out into stifling silence can create muscle strong enough to move a woman from fearful mourning to courageous motherhood. Through Building a Nest from the Bones of My People, the pain of the past is excavated like an aching, crooked bone—rebroken to set the future on firm footing. Smoldering embers of generational trauma are doused, ghosts are set to rest and the seeds of hope begin to blossom. We can all heal. With this hauntingly beautiful collection, Morgan shows us how."—Andrea Thompson, author of A Selected History of Soul Speak

Additional Information
80 pages | 5.13" x 8.03" | Paperback

In this complex, at times dark, poetry collection from Inuk author Jamesie Fournier, readers are taken through the recesses of a character struggling with inner demons whispering into his mind.

As he attempts to overcome his inner turmoil within a Colonial and contemporary system that oppresses him, the speaker guides readers through verse both ethereal and imagistic. Echoing artists as varied as Margaret Laurence and The Velvet Underground, this sweeping collection of bilingual verse deals with erasure, resilience, and—above all—resistance through the voice of one complex protagonist.

Educator Information
Bilingual Verse in English and Inuktitut 

Additional Information
132 pages | 7.00" x 9.25" | 10 b&w Photos | Paperback

Brandi Bird's frank, transcendent poetry explores the concepts of health, language, place, and memory in this long-anticipated debut collection.

Brandi Bird's long-anticipated debut poetry collection, The All + Flesh, explores the concepts of health, language, place, and memory that connect its author to their chosen kin, blood relatives, and ancestral lands. By examining kinship in broader contexts, these frank, transcendent poems expose binaries that exist inside those relationships, then inspect and tease them apart in the hope of moving toward decolonial future(s). Bird's work is highly concerned with how outer and inner landscapes move and change within the confines of the English language, particularly the "I" of the self, a tradition of movement that has been lost for many who don't speak their Indigenous languages or live on their homelands. By exploring the landscapes the poet does inhabit, both internally and externally, Bird's poems seek to delve into and reflect their cultural lineages-specifically Saulteaux, Cree, and Métis-and how these transformative identities shape the person they are today.

I am made of centuries & carbohydrates
the development of my molars
the hunger the teeth grew
has been with me since childhood
I can't escape the mouths of others

Awards

• 2024 Poetry in English, Indigenous Voices Awards 

Reviews
"Since hearing Brandi Bird at a reading in a park in summertime recite the lines, "I know / then that there is hope / until I die & then / there is other / people's hope," I have thought about them many times, they have merged with my own consciousness. That's the power of Bird's poems-they resonate at such a visceral and cerebral level that they become a part of you. The All + Flesh marks the arrival of an endlessly moving and astounding voice in Indigenous poetry. I, for one, will be reading these poems for the rest of my life." — Billy-Ray Belcourt, author of A MINOR CHORUS

"In The All + Flesh, Brandi Bird maps the psychic space between 'NDN compartmentalization' and split prairies, from bus depots to 'endocrine storms,' from LiveJournal to a living history of relocation under land theft. 'My body is not an empire but first contact happened at / birth' and 'I eat / until my mouth needles / the dark.' With exacting lucidity, Bird's lyrics chart the body as a reservoir for colonial malice, a site of resistance, and a conduit for a voice that is visceral, immediate, and uncompromising. An absolute triumph of a debut."— Liz Howard, author of Letters in a Bruised Cosmos

Additional Information
96 pages | 6.00" x 8.00" | Paperback

From epic ventures into mythic and fantastical tales to the everyday trials of getting the laundry done, NShannacappo’s debut poetry collection follows many journeys through darkness to hope, healing and heroism. Pure and hauntingly beautiful turns of phrase sound out in the voices of angels, monsters and demons, mythic characters, and the sometimes wry, sometimes grieving voice of a man once broken in heart, spirit, and mind. Through the Eyes of Asunder begins and ends with hope, and takes the reader through sorrow and sadness to bright moments of happiness and love.

Reviews
“Neal Shannacappo is a spiritual thinker. The poetry and life’s perspectives he shares in this collation remind us of the unconditional love and support one can access through the Creator-given learning ways we as human beings are blessed to be born with. Read his words! Feed them to your heart, digest them spiritually and you will benefit from the medicine intended in every word and stanza.”—Albert Dumont, 2021–2022 Poet Laureate for Ottawa and author of Sitting by the Rapids.

“Reading this book, it felt many times like I had stumbled upon a shoebox filled with letters not sent and journals put away for safekeeping. You feel like you shouldn’t pry, but you just can’t help yourself. It was a wonderful read.”—John Brady McDonald, author of KITOTAM

Additional Information
143 pages | 6.00" x 9.00" | 6 illustrations | Paperback

In this intimate collection of writing and art, Brian J. Francis invites us to explore the sacred space within. Through vision, prayer, and dream work, Francis channels messages from the ancestors to help us contemplate themes of nature, mortality, truth, and reconciliation. Eclipsing space and time, Francis words and art resonate with deep texture, hope, colour, and mastery. The result is a shimmering testament to his Mi'kmaq ancestors, and a pledge to the next generation. Guiding us beyond spirit and nation boundaries, this eloquent read is ideal for anyone seeking sanctuary, sacred space, and a comfortable seat at their own altar.

Additional Information
88 pages | 8.00" x 8.00" | Hardcover 

Childhood Thoughts and Water is a collection of Beat Poetry, Spoken Word, Performance Art and Lyrical Verse. This is a work which journeys into the memories and events of an Urban Indigenous warrior's struggles to reconnect with a language and culture that is seemingly always almost out of reach. The common theme of reconnecting with nature and with water is interspersed with the imagery of childhood recollections and anecdotes about life and love, aspirations and defeats, and the desire to achieve greatness in spite of the obstacles and barriers inherent in a life lived on the fringes, in the shadows and on the streets, in the spotlight and behind the backstage curtain.

Educator & Series Information
This book is part of the Modern Indigenous Voices series.

Additional Information
80 pages | 5.50" x 8.50" | Paperback

Drawing on her Ojibwa roots and storytelling, Barnes shares stories that take the heart on the path to the past, nostalgic though it may be, wherein lies discovery, memories, and rhythms that ease the soul. Touching, tender but never overwrought, Barnes' poetry brings wonder to the spirit of nature and provides a sense of connection to the things most often overlooked.

Additional Information
140 pages | 7.50" x 5.00" | Paperback

This evocative new poetry collection speaks with a fierce tenderness of many aspects of the poet’s life: a childhood spent on the banks of the Churchill River, the death of a beloved one, the struggle to try to find forgiveness for wrongs done and the weariness of trying to redress those wrongs. And, most poignantly, a beautiful rebellion reaches one hand back to Louis Riel and one hand forward to future Métis generations.

The poems navigate losses that we all suffer when the world of our childhoods has altered irrevocably; they reveal the pain caused by residential schools and share despair at the lack of progress in social justice and self-determination. Rita Bouvier’s work is intimate and insightful, written in inviting, open-hearted language that includes many Cree and Michif phrases and their translation.

There is a quiet power--riverine, deep, unstoppable--that flows through these words.

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72 pages | 6.00" x 9.00" | Paperback

Métis Ukrainian writer Conor Kerr’s sharp and incisive poems move restlessly across landscapes and time.

Conor Kerr’s poetry is in constant motion. 4Runners streak through the night, racing with coyotes and roving across the land. Buses travel from town to town, from one memory to another, from past to present. Friends and lovers search for each other on Instagram and find nothing. And always the natural world travels alongside: the watching magpies, woodpeckers and cedar waxwings, the coyotes and porcupines. Family is the crisp wings of mallard ducks flying at dawn, just as it is a game of crib, a Mario Kart race, a dance party.

Old Gods defies colonialism on the Prairies. Kerr situates his reader in the Métis mindset: the old gods of the land are alive within the rivers, the birds, the hills and the prairies that surround us, and they’ll always be here.

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96 pages | 5.50" x 8.00" | Paperback

To celebrate the fifth anniversary of the Indigenous Voices Awards, an anthology consisting of selected works by finalists over the past five years, edited by Jordan Abel, Carleigh Baker, and Madeleine Reddon.

For five years, the Indigenous Voices Awards have nurtured the work of Indigenous writers in lands claimed by Canada. Established in 2017 initially through a crowd-funded campaign by lawyer Robin Parker and author Silvia Moreno-Garcia that set an initial fundraising goal of $10,000, the initiative raised over $116,000 in just four months.

Through generous support from organizations such as Penguin Random House Canada, CELA, and others, the award has grown and have helped usher in a new and dynamic generation of Indigenous writers. Past IVA recipients include Billy-Ray Belcourt, Tanya Tagaq, and Jesse Thistle. The IVAs also help promote the works of unpublished writers, helping launch the careers of Smokii Sumac, Cody Caetano, and Samantha Martin-Bird.

For the first time, a selection of standout works over the past five years of the Indigenous Voices Award will be collected in an anthology that will highlight some of the most groundbreaking Indigenous writing across poetry, prose, and theatre in English, French, and in an Indigenous language. Curated by award-winning and critically acclaimed writers Carleigh Baker, Jordan Abel, and Indigenous scholar Madeleine Reddon, this anthology will be a true celebration of Indigenous storytelling that will both introduce readers to emerging luminaries as well as return them to treasured favourites.

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Carving Space: The Indigenous Voices Awards Anthology: A collection of prose and poetry from emerging Indigenous writers in lands claimed by Canada includes a selection of standout work from the first five years of the Indigenous Voices Awards.

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400 pages | 5.50" x 8.25" | Paperback

A vital collection weaving history, personal experience, and Indigenous resilience.

Spells, Wishes, and the Talking Dead: mamahtâwisiwin, pakosêyimow, nikihci-âniskotâpân is a wonder. It plays with form, space, and language, comparing meanings in English and nêhiyawêwin (Plains Cree). The reader’s attention is drawn to the restrictive and imposed constructs of English grammar, the way it boxes in interpretation and cadence.

With inspiring defiance, Wanda John-Kehewin demonstrates which magics cannot be suppressed. Broken into three sections, Spells, Wishes, and the Talking Dead looks at the sickening grip of colonialism: its ongoing detriment to the mental health of Indigenous people, its theft of language, and the scope of its intergenerational harms. The author places herself, her work, and her family’s personal experiences in the context of a historical timeline running from the so-called doctrine of discovery to the present day. Recounting the two in tandem reveals the unrelenting nature of violence and, in turn, resistance. There is great power in truth; John-Kehewin “stands in her truth” so that other survivors may stand in theirs.

Educator Information
Recommended in the Canadian Indigenous Books for Schools resource collection as being useful for grades 11 and 12 for English Language Arts, English First Peoples, Social Studies.

Content Warning: Coarse language, mature content: references to abuse, trauma, suicide.

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96 pages | 6.00" x 9.00" | Paperback

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

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128 pages | 6.00" x 8.00" | Paperback

A magnificent selection of fifty poems to celebrate three-term US Poet Laureate Joy Harjo’s fifty years as a poet.

Over a long, influential career in poetry, Joy Harjo has been praised for her “warm, oracular voice” (John Freeman, Boston Globe) that speaks “from a deep and timeless source of compassion for all” (Craig Morgan Teicher, NPR). Her poems are musical, intimate, political, and wise, intertwining ancestral memory and tribal histories with resilience and love.

In this gemlike volume, Harjo selects her best poems from across fifty years, beginning with her early discoveries of her own voice and ending with moving reflections on our contemporary moment. Generous notes on each poem offer insight into Harjo’s inimitable poetics as she takes inspiration from Navajo horse songs and jazz, reckons with home and loss, and listens to the natural messengers of the earth. As evidenced in this transcendent collection, Joy Harjo’s “poetry is light and elixir, the very best prescription for us in wounded times” (Sandra Cisneros, Millions).

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144 pages | 5.65" x 8.53" | Hardcover 

Faller mixes Roshoman style storytelling with traditional stories to describe the meeting, or juxtapositions, of a few characters on a Reservation. All of these characters are damaged in one way or the other. Faller is not narrative so much as bursts and flashes. It is not about what happens as much as moments in time. The stories fall together rather than follow each other. Faller is dark and funny in places, less sane and rational than yearning. Haunted. Not like every other book, Faller is the first work by an old young Indigenous writer, not trying to make sense of life on the Reservation, but giving a glimpse into the world he grew up in.

Educator & Series Information
This book is part of the Modern Indigenous Voices series.

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80 pages | 8.50" x 5.50" | Paperback

In his commanding poetry debut, Wolf Sonnets, R. P. LaRose undoes the sonnet's classical constraints, retooling the form for current political circumstances. Packed with family lore, these poems reflect on how deeply we can trust the terms we use to construct our identity. A proud citizen of the Métis Nation, LaRose even questions his right to identify as such: "I was made in someone else's home," he writes. Wolf Sonnets is verse obsessed with names, infinity, numbers, categories, and interconnectedness. Depicting his ancestors as wolves--symbols of survival and protection--LaRose brings fresh insight to his wider poetic project: castigating the inequality, greed, and racism inherent to colonialism.

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80 pages | 5.00" x 7.50" | Paperback

The poems in Trailer Park Shakes are direct and vernacular, rooted in community--a working-class Métis voice rarely heard from.

These poems, while dreamlike and playful, bear unflinching witness to the workings of injustice--how violence is channeled through institutions and refracted intimately between people, becoming intertwined with the full range of human experience, including care and love. Trailer Park Shakes is a book that seems to want to hold everything--an entire cross-section of lived experience--written by a poet whose courage, attention, and capacity to trace contradiction inspire trust in her words' embrace. Dion-Glowa's poems are quietly philosophical, with a heartfelt, self-possessed politic.

Reviews
"Dion-Glowa's voice crackles with frank, startling insight." — Sachiko Murakami, author of Render

"As I read this work, I was taken back, time and again, to those days when I was a young street poet who had so much to say at a time where it felt like no one was listening. There are many times when sentiment needs to be expressed in the most bold and unapologetic way it can, and the brashness and frank delivery found in this work is the hallmark of a collection that should and will rattle your cage and shine a light where it is needed. These are not exploitative poems, nor are they the Victim Impact Statement of a wounded spirit. This collection is the chronicle of an eyewitness to reality, without compromise." — John Brady McDonald, Nehiyawak-Metis poet and artist, author of Kitotam

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96 pages | 5.75" x 8.50" | Paperback

A “kunik” is a traditional Inuit greeting, often given to loved ones, in which a person places their nose on another’s cheek and breathes them in. Where the Sea Kuniks the Land extends that gesture of love to the Arctic landscape, in a suite of poems that celebrates the interconnectedness of people and place, past and present.

The importance of land, culture, and identity play key roles in these poems, and the collection will move readers to think deeply about colonization, intergenerational trauma, and grief.

This collection paints beautiful pictures of Arctic landscapes, love stories, and growth. It will take readers on a journey through the seasons, from fierce snowstorms to a warm field of Labrador tea flowers.

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80 pages | 7.00" x 9.25" | Paperback

Blood follows a Two-Spirit Indigenous person as they navigate urbanity, queerness, and a kaleidoscope of dreams, memory, and kinship.

Conceived in the same world as their acclaimed debut, Bones, Tyler Pennock's Blood centres around a protagonist who at first has difficulty knowing the difference between connection and pain, and we move with them as they explore what it means to want. Pennock weaves longing, intimacy, and Anishinaabe relationalities to recentre and rethink their speaker's relationship to the living--never forgetting non-human kin.

This book is a look at how deep history is represented in the everyday; it also tries to answer how one person can challenge the impacts of that history. It is a reminder that Indigenous people carry the impacts of colonial history and wrestle with them constantly. Blood explores the relationships between spring and winter, ice and water, static things and things beginning to move, and what emerges in the thaw.

Reviews
"Pennock's Blood shines on the parts of the self that defy the ruthlessness of empire. By turns inward to the still and sobering power of language, and again outward to the echoes of 'leaves and wind,' a music as sensitive as it is revelatory ushers us into his unique measure of aliveness. The poet here is engaged and unafraid to look long." — Canisia Lubrin, author of The Dyzgraphxst

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104 pages | 5.75" x 8.50" | Paperback

In volume three of the Grassroots Anthology, the celebration of First Nations artists and their craft continues. Poetry, short stories, photography and fine art are all featured, and MFNERC hopes to inspire younger generations through sharing these works. The gifts of storytelling and visual art have long been cherished by First Nations people, and in this anthology we offer these gifts for your own reflection and learning.