Marilyn Dumont

Poetry. Native American Studies. These are Indian poems; Canadian poems; human poems. Marilyn Dumont's Metis heritage offers her challenges that few of us welcome. Here she turns them into opportunities: in a voice that is fierce, direct, and true, she explores and transcends the multiple boundaries imposed by society on the self. She mocks, with exasperation and sly humour, the banal exploitation of Indianness; more-Indian-than-thou one-upmanship; and white condescension and ignorance. She celebrates the person, clearly observing, who defines her own life. "In a world where cultural fascism is becoming the politically correct norm, we desperately need courageous voices who shout Stop Think Marilyn Dumont is one such voice. She is a Metis poet with attitude and I applaud her courage and clarity"--Beth Cuthand.

A Really Good Brown Girl

With a title derived from John A. Macdonald's moniker for the Métis, Pemmican Eaters explores Marilyn Dumont's sense of history as the dynamic present. Combining free verse and metered poems, her latest collection aims to recreate a palpable sense of the Riel Resistance period in Métis history and evoke the geographical, linguistic/cultural, and political situation of Batoche during this time through the eyes of those who experienced the battles, as well as through the eyes of Gabriel and Madeleine Dumont and Louis Riel. Included in this collection are poems about the bison, seed beadwork, and the Red River Cart, and employ elements of the Michif language, which was spoken by Dumont's ancestors along with French and Cree. In Dumont's Pemmican Eaters, a multiplicity of identity is a strengthening rather than a weakening or diluting force in culture.

The Pemmican Eaters

A picture of the Riel Resistance from one of Canada's preeminent Métis poets With a title derived from John A. Macdonald's moniker for the Métis, The Pemmican Eaters explores Marilyn Dumont's sense of history as the dynamic present. Combining free verse and metered poems, her latest collection aims to recreate a palpable sense of the Riel Resistance period and evoke the geographical, linguistic/cultural, and political situation of Batoche during this time through the eyes of those who experienced the battles, as well as through the eyes of Gabriel and Madeleine Dumont and Louis Riel. Included in this collection are poems about the bison, seed beadwork, and the Red River Cart, and some poems employ elements of the Michif language, which, along with French and Cree, was spoken by Dumont's ancestors. In Dumont's The Pemmican Eaters, a multiplicity of identities is a strengthening rather than a weakening or diluting force in culture.

Pemmican Eaters, The

Guest editor Marilyn Dumont, author of the widely acclaimed collection A Really Good Brown Girl, brings a passionate ear for rhythm, an eye for narrative compression, an appetite for vital subject matter, and an affinity for warmth and wit to Best Canadian Poetry 2020. The fifty poignantly independent poems gathered here explore themes of emergence, defiance, ferocious anger, gratitude, and survival. They are alive with acoustic energy, precise in their language, and moving in their use of the personal to explore an increasingly tumultuous world.

Marilyn Dumont

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