Louise Bernice Halfe - Sôhkêyihta: The Poetry of Sky Dancer Louise Bernice Halfe

Shkyihta The Poetry of Sky Dancer Louise Bernice Halfe

The Poetry of Sky Dancer Louise Bernice Halfe Selected with an introduction by David Gaertner and an afterword by Sky Dancer Louise Bernice Halfe Wilfrid Laurier University Press acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts for its publishing program. We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund for our publishing activities. This work was supported by the Research Support Fund.

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Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Halfe, Louise Bernice, 1953
[Poems. Selections]
Shkyihta : the poetry of Sky Dancer Louise Bernice Halfe / selected with an introduction by David Gaertner ; and an afterword by Sky Dancer Louise Bernice Halfe. (Laurier poetry series)
Includes some words in Cree.
Issued in print and electronic formats.
ISBN 978-1-77112-349-5 (paperback).ISBN 978-1-77112-351-8 (epub).
ISBN 978-1-77112-350-1 (pdf) I.

Gaertner, David, 1979, editor II. Title. III. Series: Laurier poetry series PS8565.A4335A6 2018 C811.54 C2017-907833-X
C2017-907834-8

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Cover photo by Nelly Volkovich.
Cover design and text design by P.J. Woodland. 2018 Wilfrid Laurier University Press
Waterloo, Ontario, Canada
www.wlupress.wlu.ca This book is printed on FSC certified paper and is certified Ecologo.

It contains post-consumer fibre, is processed chlorine free, and is manufactured using biogas energy. Printed in Canada Every reasonable effort has been made to acquire permission for copyright material used in this text, and to acknowledge all such indebtedness accurately. Any errors and omissions called to the publishers attention will be corrected in future printings. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written consent of the publisher or a licence from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency (Access Copyright). For an Access Copyright licence, visit http://www.accesscopyright.ca or call toll free to 1-800-893-5777.

, Brian Henderson and Neil Besner , David Gaertner The Laurier Poetry Series was conceived in 2002 as a means to celebrate Canadian poetry and to introduce new readers to the richness and diversity of its poets.

Rather than curate another large anthology that featured only a few poems by each poet, we thought it a good idea to suggest the real range of a poets work by enlarging the selection. Our anthology would have to comprise many volumes. But why stick with a many-volumed anthology? Why not create a series of small and affordable selecteds? Each volume could be introduced by a knowledgeable and reader- and poet-friendly critic in greater depth than in normal anthologies, and each could provide space for the poet to respond or participate in an additional way by contributing an afterword such as no standard anthology could offer. Readers could pick and choose which poets they wanted to explore; instructors could also pick and choose combinations of volumes in a package for their students and could change this selection from semester to semester. And the volumes could reach an international audience. Each would also have the potential to open out onto other books by the featured poet.

That was the blueprint. The Series was launched in 2004, with Catherine Hunters selection of the poetry of Lorna Crozier, Before the First Word. There have been over twenty-five volumes since, offering introductions to a wide range of poets and poetries, and more are in the works. The Laurier Poetry Series is now the most comprehensive collection of Canadian poetries in print anywhere. Most volumes are also available as digital editions. The consummate professionalism of the team at Wilfrid Laurier University Press, especially Managing Editor Rob Kohlmeier, has ensured that these sometimes technically tricky volumes are presented accurately and beautifully.

What continues to inspire us about the LPS is its reception across the country. The love and art and passion and intimacy that twenty-five-plus editors and twenty-five-plus poets have brought to their volumes; the innumerable hours and conversations and meetings, the thousands of emails between and among poets and editors and the staff at WLU Press; the generous reviews in the countrys journals; the reception in classrooms and beyond: all of this eloquently speaks to the joyful proliferation of poetry in Canada today. With each new volume, LPS hopes to continue to recognize the growing provenance of this wealth, the wide range of these riches. Our poets and their readers deserve nothing less. Brian Henderson and Neil Besner General Editors

Sky Dancer Louise Bernice Halfe is a Cree poet and social worker based just outside of Saskatoon. She was born in 1953 in Two Hills, Alberta, and was raised on the Saddle Lake Reserve on Treaty Six territory.

At the age of seven she was taken from her home to attend Blue Quills Residential School (St. Paul, Alberta), where she remained for nine years. She began writing about her experiences in journals as a high school student, a practice that would eventually awaken her to a life as a poet: I didnt choose poetry, Halfe tells Cree and European poet Selina Boan. Poetry came nodding its head in when I was keeping a journal. The journal writing kept calling to me and was reinforced by dreams and ceremony. Halfe published her first poems in Writing the Circle: Native Women of Western Canada (NeWest Press), a collection of stories, poems, essays, and bibliographical pieces written by Indigenous women.

This was followed by work published in Residential Schools: The Stolen Years (University of Saskatchewan, News & Publications Office), a collection of writing by residential school survivors, including Janice Acoose, Phil Fontaine, and Maria Campbell. Her first book, Bear Bones & Feathers, was published by Coteau Books in 1994 and won the Canadian Peoples Poet Award and the Milton Acorn Award. Halfe has published four critically acclaimed books of poetry, including Bear Bones, Blue Marrow (1998/2004), The Crooked Good (2007), and Burning in This Midnight Dream (2016). Blue Marrow, originally published by McClelland & Stewart, was a finalist for the Governor Generals Award and won the Pat Lowther Memorial Award. Halfe republished the book six years later with Coteau Books (where her work has primarily lived ever since), adding a Cree-to-English glossary and nine new pages of text. In 2005, she was chosen as Saskatchewans Poet Laureate, only the second person ever to hold that post, and in 2012 she received an honorary Doctor of Letters (DLitt) from Wilfrid Laurier University.

In 2016 she was a recipient of a Hnatyshyn Foundation REVEAL award, given in recognition of Indigenous artists living in Canada. In 2017 she was awarded the Latner Writers Trust Award in recognition of a remarkable body of work. Burning in This Midnight Dream continues a long poetic engagement with residential schools and makes a significant intervention into the discourse surrounding the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC): [T]hese poems are testimonies of truth, justice and healing, former TRC senior researcher Paulette Regan writes. They give us hope. Social work also plays an important role in Halfes life and in her poems. She received her bachelor of Social Work from the University of Regina and has certificates in drug and alcohol counselling from the Nechi Institute: I use my social work skills to help others and to enrich my writing career, she tells Boan.

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