As Autumn begins at the same time as classes and longer nights, books of poems can help settle your mind as the day winds down. Below we’ve picked out a few books of poems that are available through Xwi7xwa & UBC Library’s online collection. If you’re looking for a physical copy of a book of poems or any other physical book, check out how to pick up physical materials at UBC campus and follow their easy steps.
Disintegrate/Dissociate: Poems by Arielle Twist unravels the complexities of human relationships after death and metamorphosis. In these spare yet powerful poems, she explores, with both rage and tenderness, the parameters of grief, trauma, displacement, and identity.
Hope Matters by Lee Maracle, Columpa Bobb, & Tania Carter is a collection of poetry written together as mothers & daughters that focuses on Indigenous history from colonial beginnings to reconciliation.
Hiraeth: poems by Carol Rose Daniels is about women supporting and lending strength and clarity to other women so they know that moving forward is always possible– and always necessary. Poems speak to the 1960’s “scoop up” of children and how this affected the lives of (one or thousands) of First Nations and Métis girls– girls who later grew to be women with questions, women with wounds, women who felt like they had no place to call home.
Runaway Dreams by Richard Wagamese describes his life on the road when he repeatedly ran away at an early age, and the beatings he received when the authorities tried “to beat the Indian right out of me”. Through it all, he offers poems of love and music, the language sensuous and tender.
The Pemmican Eaters by Marilyn Dumont aims to recreate a palpable sense of the Riel Resistance period and evoke the geographical, linguistic/cultural, and political situation of Batoche during this time through the eyes of those who experienced the battles, as well as through the eyes of Gabriel and Madeleine Dumont and Louis Riel.