new year’s eve 2013
don’t you understand
truth is a seed
planted deep
you can’t get it
unless you dig
I rarely pick up poetry — I’m not schooled in reading it and know that the craft and conventions go over my head — but there’s something very special about Katherena Vermette’s collection in river woman. Written in free verse, and often without punctuation or capitalisations, it feels like poetry as an act of decolonisation: as an author of Métis heritage, her people were here in Canada before the settlers came with their writing’s craft and conventions and her poetry feels precrafty; preconventional; I got this because it spoke straight to my heart.
Separated into three sections (black river, red river, and an other story), the poems feel broadly separated into love narratives, feminist narratives (the river as a woman), and political narratives (and with an epigraph by Chrystos that states that “poetry without politics is narcissistic and not useful to us”, Vermette is well-supported in expressing rage and resistance in her work.) I acknowledge that giving any excerpts out of context is a bit meaningless (and therefore unfair), but I can’t help but share a few lines, if only to help me remember what I found so powerful in this collection.
From black river (this is the only “shape” poem in the collection and I kept reading this one over and over; lapping my tongue around the texture; the only poem I'm sharing in full)
arch
night
comes as
comfortable
as a bed as
cumbersome
as limbs as soft
as an arch to put
your hand under
as rich as a slice
of moon so sweet
you have to spoon
me small rounded
bites I nibble slow
and savour in long
languid mouthfuls
lapping my tongue
around their texture
a taste so beautiful
I miss it before
I even
swallow
From red river
riverstory
I search
for stories of the river
scratch at the surface
dig deep
pull at bits of limestone
and other forgotten things
but I can’t find them
those things we were never supposed to
lose
And from the final section, an other story
métissage / Métis Sage
my blood has been here forever
as rooted as the river
and just as much in danger
I have enjoyed reading Vermette’s novels and I appreciate the deeper dive into the author’s mindset that her poetry provides: these poems are accessible, thought-provoking, and wise; enthusiastically recommended.
