Indigena Awry - Softcover

Annharte

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1554200679 ISBN 13: 9781554200672

Publisher: New Star Books, 2012

Synopsis

Poetry. Native American Studies. NDN word warrior Marie Annharte Baker's fourth book of poems, INDIGENA AWRY, is her largest and wildest yet. Set noticeably in Winnipeg and Vancouver, the poems are a laser-eyed meander through contested streets filled with racism, classism, and sexism. Shot through with sex and violence and struggle and sadness and trauma, her work is always set to detect and confront the delusions of colonialism and its discontents.

These poems are informed by a sceptical spirituality. They call for justice for NDNs through the Permanent Resistance that goes around in cities. This is bruising and exacting stuff, but Annharte is also one of poetry's best jokers.

While Indigena Awry is written for NDN persons, it is highly recommended for truth-seekers of every nature and anarchs of word and spirit. In an Annharte poem you might lose your way only to find what's important.

About this title

About the Author:

Annharte, aka Marie Baker, is Anishinabe (Little Saskatchewan First Nation, Manitoba). She has moved her urban campground back to her birthplace, otherwise known as Winnipeg. She is the author of four poetry books, Being on the Moon (1990), Columbus Coyote Cafe, (1995) and EXERCISES IN LIP POINTING (2003) and INDIGENA AWRY (2012), and a book of essays, AKA (2012).

Review:

Indigena Awry is darker and tougher than its predecessors, saturated with rejection of "honest Injun" clichés and of ageist and sexist stereotypes from settler culture....

In this tough-minded, sometimes funny, and frequently eloquent book, five centuries have distilled rage into incandescence.... In her commitment to technical experimentation, Annharte s work ranges from dub to lyric, from spoken word to elegy, from colloquial humour to jagged irony in which the experimental is never separate from a passionate rejection of white bourgeois aesthetics. --Canadian Literature

You should read this book because it matters.... This book directly responds to the injustices facing Aboriginal people. It is revolutionary literature. --Contemporary Verse 2

Cutting, scathing and frank, Baker s poetics build towards a fatal blow: the violence of settler colonialism meets with razor-sharp critique; you think the cat is playing till she severs the neck of the mouse.

At other times the humour is hyperbolic, building towering metaphors that threaten to topple white structures of power, as in the poem help me I m a poor Indian who doesn t have enough books.

In yet other pieces, the tonal affect is flat, quiet, matter of fact. The narrator s psychic pain laid out on the table without flourish. --The Rusty Tuque

About this edition

• Publisher: New Star Books
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 1554200679
• ISBN 13: 9781554200672
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 144