Publication Date: July 2018
Paperback ISBN: 978-1-988449-32-6
Page size: 5″ x 7.5″
72 pages
eBook ISBN: 978-1-988449-33-3
Translated from French by Howard Scott
In this, her third volume of poetry, this Aboriginal writer from Quebec again confronts the loss of her landscape and language.
On my left hip
a face
I walk
I walk upright
like a shadow
a people on my hip
a boatload of fruit
and the dream inside
women and children first
“A cry rises in me and transfigures me. The world waits for woman to come back as she was born: woman standing, woman powerful, woman resurgent. A call rises in me and I’ve decided to say yes to my birth.”
“Fontaine’s poetry is sparse and intuitive, flowing freely through crystal-clear images.”
–Wasafiri
Praise for Assi Manifesto
“Fontaine’s profound, complex poetics combined with her cultural perspective make Assi Manifesto a timely and timeless collection.”
–World Literature Today
“This collection says important things in this era of truth and reconciliation, but it also says them in conceptually interesting ways, with dexterous poetic moves.”
–Canadian Literature
“The poems are a call to the historical pre-invasion calm of North America, for respect as equals against the default culture that partitions her people into the past. The battles in the poems are mythical, symbolic, and large in this manifesto for national and personal pride.”
—The Montreal Review of Books
“[The author] already has an important place amongst those who designate this world the borders of the intimate and the giant.”
—La Presse
$10.79 – $14.67
Publication Date: July 2018
Paperback ISBN: 978-1-988449-32-6
Page size: 5″ x 7.5″
72 pages
eBook ISBN: 978-1-988449-33-3
Natasha Kanapé Fontaine, born in 1991, is a slam poet, visual artist and indigenous rights activist. Innu of Pessamit community of the North Shore, she spent most of her life in urban areas, as did many other Aboriginal youth of her generation. Noticed first in Rimouski where she was studying, and at events in Montreal in spring 2012, Natasha Kanapé Fontaine is prominent on the provincial slam scene — she’s been dubbed the territorial slammer. She figures on Radio-Canada’s Plus on est de fou, plus on lit! list of ten young writers to watch. With an enduring commitment to the Idle No More movement, Natasha Kanapé Fontaine is part of the new generation of a people rising from the ashes, and who intends to take the place she deserves. She lives in Montreal. |