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Indigenous Poetry

Indigenous Authors in the Spotlight Series

Our Winter 2019 Indigenous authors spotlight, timed to help celebrate First Voices Week at Concordia, shines on poets. The list features contemporary works, including Griffin Poetry Prize winners for 2017 and 2018, older favourites and more contentious choices, long form poems and anthologies; the poetry covers topics such as representation, revolution, racism, and love.

Injun

Jordan Abel

A long poem about racism and the representation of Indigenous peoples.

Full-metal Indigiqueer: Poems

Joshua Whitehead

This poetry collection focuses on a hybridized Indigiqueer trickster character named Zoa.

Refuse: CanLit in Ruins

edited by Hannah McGregor, Julie Rak, and Erin Wunker

This collection features poems and stories by Gwen Benaway, Chelsea Vowel, Joshua Whitehead, and Alicia Elliot.

it was never going to be ok

jaye simpson

Explores the intimacies of understanding intergenerational trauma, Indigeneity and queerness.

This Wound is a World: Poems

Billy-Ray Belcourt

Part manifesto, part memoir; his poems and essays upset genre and play with form.

Nature Poem

Tommy Pico

A book-length poem about Teebs, a young, queer, Indigenous man.

Collected poems and selected prose

E. Pauline Johnson (Tekahionwake)

Published nine decades after her death, this is the first complete collection of Pauline Johnson's known poems.

Native Poetry in Canada: A Contemporary Anthology

edited by Jeannette C. Armstrong & Lally Grauer

Brings together the poetry of less publicized authors alongside that of critically-acclaimed poets.

Talking to the Diaspora

Lee Maracle

Poems embody the fearless passion and spirited wit for which Lee Maracle is beloved and revered.

Indigenous Poetics in Canada

edited by Neal McLeod

Embraces a wider sense of poetics, including Indigenous oralities, languages, and understandings of place.

Poems for a New World

Connie Fife

These are poems of revolution, of love, of inspiration.

Breath Tracks

Jeannette Armstrong

Tracks with words the lives, pain and resilience of Native peoples and their long memoried past.

My Heart Soars

Chief Dan George and and Helmut Hirnschall

Collection of memories, life stories, wisdom and poetry from Chief Dan George.

Fire Power

Chrystos

Eloquent words are Chrystos's tool for survival and her weapon in fighting for social justice.

A Night for the Lady

Joanne Arnott

Each poem arises from conversations with poets, colleagues and intimate friends.

Thank you to Donna Langille for her valuable assistance in putting together this collection.

About the Series

The Indigenous Authors in the Spotlight Series aims to support and promote Indigenous authors and artists by featuring some of the Library's materials with Indigenous content, specifically focusing on works by First Nations, Métis, and Inuit authors and artists.

Access all editions in the Series