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A gender-fluid trickster character leaps from Cree stories to inhabit this racous and rebellious new work by poet Louise Bernice Halfe. There are no pronouns in Cree for gender; aw'sis (which means illuminated child) reveals herself through shape-shifting, adopting different genders, exploring the English language with merriment, and sharing his journey of mishaps with humor, mystery, and spirituality. Opening with a joyful and intimate Introduction from Elder Maria Campbell, aw'sis - kinky and dishevelled is a force of Indigenous resurgence, resistance, and soul-healing laughter. If you've read Halfe's previous books, prepared to be surprised by this one. Raging in the dark, uncovering the painful facts wrought on her and her people's lives by colonialism, racism, religion, and residential schools, she has walked us through raw realities with unabashed courage and intense, precise lyricism. But for her fifth book, another choice presented itself. Would she carve her way with determined ferocity into the still-powerful destructive forces of colonialism, despite Canada's official, hollow promises to make things better? After a soul-searching Truth and Reconciliation process, the drinking water still hasn't improved, and Louise began to wonder whether inspiration had deserted her. Then aw'sis showed up--a trickster, teacher, healer, wheeler-dealer, shapeshifter, woman, man, nuisance, inspiration. A Holy Fool with their fly open, speaking Cree, aw'sis came to Louise out of the ancient stories of her people, her Elders, from community input (through tears and laughter), from her own full heart and her three-dimensional dreams. Following aw'sis's lead, Louise has flipped her blanket over, revealing a joking, mischievous, unapologetic alter ego--right on time.
“I build this story like my lair. One willow, / a rib at a time” — “The Crooked Good” Since 1990, Sky Dancer Louise Bernice Halfe’s work has stood out as essential testimony to Indigenous experiences within the ongoing history of colonialism and the resilience of Indigenous storytellers. Sôhkêyihta includes searing poems, written across the expanse of Halfe’s career, aimed at helping readers move forward from the darkness into a place of healing. Halfe’s own afterword is an evocative meditation on the Cree word sôhkêyihta: Have courage. Be brave. Be strong. She writes of coming into her practice as a poet and the stories, people, and experiences that gave her courage and allowed her to construct her “lair.” She also reflects on her relationship with nêhiyawêwin, the Cree language, and the ways in which it informs her relationships and poetics. The introduction by David Gaertner situates Halfe’s writing within the history of whiteness and colonialism that works to silence and repress Indigenous voices. Gaertner pays particular attention to the ways in which Halfe addresses, incorporates, and pushes back against silence, and suggests that her work is an act of bearing witness – what Kwagiulth scholar Sarah Hunt identifies as making Indigenous lives visible.
In heart-wrenching detail, Louise Halfe recalls the damage done by the residential schools to her parents, her family, and herself in her new poetry collection.
A Disappearing Number takes as its starting point the story of one of the most mysterious and romantic mathematical collaborations of all time. Simultaneously a narrative and an enquiry, the production crosses three continents and several histories, to weave a provocative theatrical pattern about our relentless compulsion to understand. A man mourns the loss of his lover, a mathematician mourns her own fate. A businessman travels from Los Angeles to Chennai pursuing the future; a physicist in CERN looks for it too. The mathematician G.H. Hardy seeks to comprehend the ideas of the genius Srinivasa Ramanujan in the chilly English surroundings of Cambridge during the First World War. Ramanujan looks to create some of the most complex mathematical patterns of all time. Threaded through this pattern of stories and ideas are questions. About mathematics and beauty; imagination and the nature of infinity; about what is continuous and what is permanent; how we are attached to the past and how we affect the future; how we create and how we love. The book features an essay by Marcus du Sautoy, Professor of Mathematics at Wadham College, Oxford, and an introduction by Simon McBurney. The Complicité production was an astonishing success during its run at the Barbican, London in Spring 2007, winning The Evening Standard's Best New Play Award 2007. Called ' Mesmerizing' by the New York Times, 'A Disappearing Number' is a brilliant play, aided with original music composed by the award winning DJ, producer and writer Nitin Sawhney. 'A Disappearing Number' was revived at the Novello Theatre, London in autumn 2010.
Witness, I Am is divided into three gripping sections of new poetry from one of Canada’s most recognized poets. The first part of the book, “Dangerous Sound,” contains contemporary themed poems about identity and belonging, undone and rendered into modern sound poetry. “Muskrat Woman,” the middle part of the book, is a breathtaking epic poem that considers the issue of missing and murdered indigenous women through the reimagining and retelling of a sacred Cree creation story. The final section of the book, “Ghost Dance,” raids the autobiographical so often found in Scofield’s poetry, weaving the personal and universal into a tapestry of sharp poetic luminosity. From “Killer,” Scofield eerily slices the dreadful in with the exquisite: “I could, this day of proficient blooms, / take your fingers, / tie them down one by one. This one for the runaway, / this one for the joker, / this one for the sass-talker, / this one for the judge, / this one for the jury. / Oh, I could kill you.”
Among her healing arts are Native symbolism and history, the memories of her childhood on the reserve, and her own dark brand of humour. Like Tomson HIghway and Thomas King, Halfe is actively involved in reclaiming the long overlooked Native comedic tradition. Her poems about the erosion of old ways, the terrors of residential school and hth pain inflicted by alcoholism abound with satiric portraits and shared jokes, yet pierce the heart with their truthfulness. Her angriest poems, infused with dark humour, are written in a Cree-inflected English she calls her "grassroots tongue." It is with this voice that she comes to terms with the legacy of Catholicism in the moving poems "ten hail mary's" and "dear poop."
Bewitched retellings of classic fairy-tales with brave and resilient heroines. In the tradition of Angela Carter, stories such as Cinderella and Rumpelstiltskin are given a witchy makeover. Tales of blood and intrigue, betrayal, and enchantment from a leading Irish YA author--not for the faint-hearted or damsels in distress. Intricately illustrated with black and white line drawings, in the style of Aubrey Beardsley, by a new Irish illustrator.
The struggle of Native American peoples after the arrival of the Europeans is well documented, even in poetry. Yet Blue Marrow introduces a unique voice and perspective to this tension, one that is poignant and simultaneously reminiscent of all that is already familiar. In this haunting collection, Halfe brings to light the hypocrisy shaped by the conflict of Christianity and tradition-unique, informative, artistic and memorable, a combination worthy of note. (KLIATT).