Saturday, August 1, 2009

IBARW: 2 poems by Marilyn Dumont

July 27th to August 2nd this year is International Blog Against Racism Week (IBARW). I've been wanting to contribute all week, but haven't felt that I had anything substantial enough to write; then I decided that in a way, posting something at all is solidarity, and so I've chosen to present two poems by a fabulous poet who I think suits the ideas beyond starting this blog very well, as well as the ideology of IBARW. Marilyn Dumont is a female Métis author, who tackles gender, race, colonialism, and intersectionality in her work, as well as also writing some kick-ass poems about love and loss and life in general. One thing I especially like about Dumont's poetry is how aggressive it is about referencing her own experiences without worrying about explaining context: non-Canadians may not get all of the things she refers to, and I know as a non-Métis or Aboriginal there is more yet that I don't get, but I find this refreshing and powerful, rather than alienating. She speaks in her own voice and does so proudly, and there is so much to admire in that approach.

Both the poems below come from Dumont's book of poetry A Really Good Brown Girl. I was not able to format the second poem exactly as she did, for which I apologize to her.

(1) Letter To Sir John A. Macdonald
Marilyn Dumont

Dear John: I'm still here and halfbreed,
after all these years
you're dead, funny thing,
that railway you wanted so badly,
there was talk a year ago
of shutting it down
and part of it was shut down,
the dayliner at least,
'from sea to shining sea,'
and you know, John,
after all that shuffling us around to suit the settlers,
we're still here and Metis.

We're still here
after Meech Lake and
one no-good-for-nothing-Indian
holdin-up-the-train,
stalling the 'Cabin syllables / Nouns of settlement,
/...steel syntax [and] / The long sentence of its exploitation'
and John, that goddamned railroad never made this a great nation,
cause the railway shut down
and this country is still quarreling over unity,
and Riel is dead
but he just keeps coming back
in all the Bill Wilsons yet to speak out of turn or favour
because you know as well as I
that we were railroaded
by some steel tracks that didn't last
and some settlers who wouldn't settle
and it's funny we're still here and callin ourselves halfbreed.

//

(2) Helen Betty Osborne
Marilyn Dumont

Betty, if I set out to write this poem about you
it might turn out instead
to be about me
or any one of
my female relatives
it might turn out to be
about this young native girl
growing up in rural Alberta
in a town with fewer Indians
than ideas about Indians
in a town just south of the 'Aryan Nations'

It might turn out to be
about Anna Mae Aquash, Donald Marshall, or Richard Cardinal,
it might even turn out to be
about our grandmothers
beasts of burden in the fur trade
skinning, scraping, pounding, packing
left behind for 'British Standards of Womanhood,'
left for white-melting-skinned women,
not bits-of-brown women
left here in this wilderness, this colony.

Betty, if I start to write a poem about you
it might turn out to be
about hunting season instead
about 'open season' on native women
it might turn out to be
about your face young and hopeful
staring back at me hollow now
from a black and white page
it might be about the 'townsfolk' (gentle word)
townsfolk who 'believed native girls were easy'
and 'less likely to complain if a sexual proposition led to violence'

Betty, if I write this poem.

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