Description
Totem Poles and Railroads 2017 FNCR succinctly defines the 500-year-old relationship between Indigenous nations and the corporation of Canada. In this, her fifth poetry collection, Janet Rogers expands on that definition with a playful, culturally powerful and, at times, experimental voice. She pays honour to her poetic characters - real and imagined, historical and present day - from Sacajawea to Nina Simone. Placing poetry at the centre of our current post-residential school/present-day reconciliation reality, Rogers' poems are expansive and intimate, challenging, thought-provoking and always personal. Janet Rogers is a Mohawk/Tuscarora writer from the Six Nations territory living on the traditional territories of the Songhees and Esquimalt peoples on Vancouver Island. Totem Poles and Railroads is Janet’s fifth poetry collection developed during her term as UNBC’s 2015/2016 Writer in Residence and OCAD’s NIGIG Visiting Artist Residency in 2016. Poems include Mush Hole, Proclamation, Great Law, Nina Simone, Sacajawea, Pocahantas, Laura Secord, and a poem that dispels the Bering Strait. This is an accessible collection of Janet's work. Totem Poles and Railroads is longlisted for 2017 First Nations Communities Read. Recommended.