The Salmon Shanties

Availability:
Ebook in PDF format. Available for immediate download after we receive your order

DRM:
Watermark

Publication Year:
2024

ISBN-13: 9781779400161

<P><B>Harold Rhenisch&rsquo;s poems balance the settler and Indigenous experiences of land and water in the Pacific Northwest</B></P><P> A collection of shanties laid out in couplets that move between English and Chinook Wawa, <I>The Salmon Shanties </I>celebrates a poetic tradition deeply rooted in the West Coast. Harold Rhenisch explores memories of people, place, and of returning home, speaking the land&rsquo;s names as a music of its own and creating a series of aural maps. </P><P> Imbued with rhythms of Secwepemc grass dances, the colloquial chatter of the Canadian poet Al Purdy, and the spirit of poet and historian Charles Lillard, Rhenisch&rsquo;s work sings of roots to the land lifted up by the sea into the sky&mdash;as if Ezra Pound had sung of Cascadia instead of Europe. </P><P><I>Do not be in Mareuil and P&eacute;rigeux tonight; it is 1912 no longer.<BR /> We, the land&rsquo;s singers, are walking the star road on the long way home<BR /> with the crickets of a July evening above Tuc el Nuit,<BR /> the burrowing owls of N&rsquo;kmp,<BR /> and the long memories of the dwarf shrews of Nighthawk.<BR /> Breath cannot be denied. Poh cannot be forsaken. Ezra, shantie.</I></P>