Description
Book SynopsisGovernor General's Awardwinning Métis poet and acclaimed novelist Katherena Vermette's second collection, river woman, explores her relationship to nature its destructive power and beauty, its timelessness, and its place in human history.
Award-winning Métis poet and novelist Katherena Vermette's second book of poetry, river woman, examines and celebrates love as decolonial action. Here love is defined as a force of reclamation and repair in times of trauma, and trauma is understood to exist within all times. The poems are grounded in what feels like an eternal present, documenting moments of clarity that lift the speaker (and reader) out of the illusion of linear experience. This is what we mean when we describe a work of art as being timeless.
Like the river they speak to, these poems return again and again to the same source in search of new ways to reconstruct what has been lost. Vermette suggests that it's through language and the bod
Trade Review
These spare, imagistic poems live up to the words of the Vietnamese spiritual leader Thich Nhat Hanh, quoted in an epigraph: ‘If our hearts are big, we can be like the river. * Toronto Star *
A book that is at once deeply personal and politically charged. * Quill and Quire *
Vermette’s new collection is a strong follow-up to her Governor General’s Award-winning debut, 2012’s North End Love Songs. * Winnipeg Free Press *
