Deepwater Vee
1st Edition
Published on 30. March 2010
112 pages
978-0-7710-8034-0 (ISBN)
Description
Melanie Siebert's stunning debut collection travels remote northern rivers, as well as two of Canada's most threatened rivers, the Athabasca and the North Saskatchewan. These rivers push the poems into a contemplation of loss and into the terrain of Alexander Mackenzie's dreams, a busker's broken-down street riffs, and the borderland wanderings of a grandmother whose absence is felt as a presence. The poems' currents are turbulent, braided, submerged. Narrative streams appear like tributaries glimpsed through brush, and then veer into unexpected territories, where boundaries blur - between the self and the other, between the living and the dead, between the human and the wild - and loss carries with it both music and silence. In this virtuoso collection, Melanie Siebert has transformed language into that rarest thing, a singular poetic vision.
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Person
MELANIE SIEBERT is the author of Deepwater Vee, a finalist for the Governor General's Literary Award for Poetry. Her nonfiction book Heads Up: Changing Minds on Mental Health won the Lane Anderson Award for best science writing for young readers in Canada and was a finalist for the Sheila A. Egoff Children's Literature Prize. Melanie grew up in Treaty 6 territory in Saskatchewan, raised as a white, third-generation settler of European/Mennonite heritage. She now lives in the Pacific Northwest on the beautiful homelands of the W̱SÁNEC Nations and the Lək̓ʷəŋən Peoples of the Songhees and Esquimalt Nations. Melanie practices attachment-focused and nature-based therapy in Victoria, BC.
Content
Current
Deepwater Vee
Bellanca Esker
Alsek Lake
Bridge to Shell's Albian Mine, Downstream, River Right
Busker
Busker
Surf City
Mackenzie 's Dream
Choker
Busker
Skull Canyon
Unnamed Creek
Busker
Mackenzie 's Dream
Grandmother
Grandmother
Hell Roaring Creek
Busker
Grass Hills, River Left, Downstream of Battleford
Grandmother
The Limit of Travels in This Direction
Busker
Mackenzie, Having Not Seen a Star Since Leaving Athabasca
Busker
Shifting, Overrun, the Symptoms, the Shoals Building
D'Aoust Esker
Nadlok-place where the deer cross
Map Unrolled on the Table
Grandmother
Letter to Kitty, Never Written
Long After Leaving, Being Overtaken with the Consequences of Suffering in the Northwest
Letter to Kitty, Never Written
Letter to Kitty, Never Written
Letter to Kitty, Never Written
Letter to Kitty, Never Written
Letter to Kitty, Never Written
Dusk
Windbound, Unnamed Camp
Tlogotsho-big place of grass
Double-Barrel Lake
The Splits
Notes
Acknowledgements
Deepwater Vee
Bellanca Esker
Alsek Lake
Bridge to Shell's Albian Mine, Downstream, River Right
Busker
Busker
Surf City
Mackenzie 's Dream
Choker
Busker
Skull Canyon
Unnamed Creek
Busker
Mackenzie 's Dream
Grandmother
Grandmother
Hell Roaring Creek
Busker
Grass Hills, River Left, Downstream of Battleford
Grandmother
The Limit of Travels in This Direction
Busker
Mackenzie, Having Not Seen a Star Since Leaving Athabasca
Busker
Shifting, Overrun, the Symptoms, the Shoals Building
D'Aoust Esker
Nadlok-place where the deer cross
Map Unrolled on the Table
Grandmother
Letter to Kitty, Never Written
Long After Leaving, Being Overtaken with the Consequences of Suffering in the Northwest
Letter to Kitty, Never Written
Letter to Kitty, Never Written
Letter to Kitty, Never Written
Letter to Kitty, Never Written
Letter to Kitty, Never Written
Dusk
Windbound, Unnamed Camp
Tlogotsho-big place of grass
Double-Barrel Lake
The Splits
Notes
Acknowledgements
