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NDN Coping Mechanisms: Notes from the Field
In his follow-up to This Wound is a World , Billy-Ray Belcourt’s Griffin Poetry Prize–winning collection, NDN Coping Notes from the Field is a provocative, powerful, and genre-bending new work that uses the modes of accusation and interrogation. He aims an anthropological eye at the realities of everyday life to show how they house the violence that continues to reverberate from the long twentieth century. In a genre-bending constellation of poetry, photography, redaction, and poetics, Belcourt ultimately argues that if signifiers of Indigenous suffering are everywhere, so too is evidence of Indigenous peoples’ rogue possibility, their utopian drive. In NDN Coping Notes from the Field , the poet takes on the political demands of queerness, mainstream portrayals of Indigenous life, love and its discontents, and the limits and uses of poetry as a vehicle for Indigenous liberation. In the process, Belcourt once again demonstrates his extraordinary craft, guile, and audacity, and the sheer dexterity of his imagination.
112 pages, Paperback
First published September 3, 2019
41 people are currently reading
2210 people want to read
About the author
Billy-Ray Belcourt
10 books751 followersBilly-Ray Belcourt is a writer and academic from the Driftpile Cree Nation. His books are: THIS WOUND IS A WORLD (Frontenac House 2017; UMinn Press 2019), winner of the 2018 Griffin Poetry Prize, NDN COPING MECHANISMS (House of Anansi 2019), winner of the 2020 Stephan G. Stephansson Poetry Prize and longlisted for Canada Reads, A HISTORY OF MY BRIEF BODY (Hamish Hamilton and Two Dollar Radio 2020), finalist for the 2020 Governor General's Literary Prize for Non-Fiction and the 2021 Lambda Literary Award for Gay Memoir/Biography, and the forthcoming A MINOR CHORUS: A NOVEL (Hamish Hamilton and Norton 2022).
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 148 reviews
December 2, 2021
I'm not sure how to talk about this book except to say it's a phenomenal collection of poetry. Reading Billy-Ray Belcourt feels like an enormous privilege. It's a collection where I had to stop myself from collecting every other line in my phone notes because it's all just so good.
I love his play with language, his seamless shifts between tones, his irreverent humour, his powerful interrogation of colonialism, and, of course, the queerness.
"A white boyfriend of mine wanted me to be less beholden to the clouds. / I told him we are all at the mercy of the sky, for better or worse. / Part of me thinks he doesn't deserve to know / about this mode of attention, this art of description. / But I can't keep secrets. I am addicted / to the high of letting my own words forsake me."
"I make out with my imaginary NDN lover / on the ashes of every Canadian pastoral poem ever written."
"My hobbies include / not dying / obsessively apologizing to the moon for all that she has to witness"
I love his play with language, his seamless shifts between tones, his irreverent humour, his powerful interrogation of colonialism, and, of course, the queerness.
"A white boyfriend of mine wanted me to be less beholden to the clouds. / I told him we are all at the mercy of the sky, for better or worse. / Part of me thinks he doesn't deserve to know / about this mode of attention, this art of description. / But I can't keep secrets. I am addicted / to the high of letting my own words forsake me."
"I make out with my imaginary NDN lover / on the ashes of every Canadian pastoral poem ever written."
"My hobbies include / not dying / obsessively apologizing to the moon for all that she has to witness"
November 28, 2019
both my review ideas ("mommy like" and "book good") for this are despicable
ok I'm back to say that this is a beautiful heart breaking collection that also is really funny in places!
my ratings for poetry are mostly did I like it? and not only would I read it again but do I want to? check and check 5 stars baby.
ok I'm back to say that this is a beautiful heart breaking collection that also is really funny in places!
my ratings for poetry are mostly did I like it? and not only would I read it again but do I want to? check and check 5 stars baby.
November 14, 2021
4.5 stars bumping up to a 5
This was such a brilliant collection!
I read most of it aloud (and where I read in the park... I re-read aloud my favourite poems back at home) because Belcourt has such a wonderful way of playing with language, word choice, and tone.
He interrogates colonialism and explores queerness and indigeneity, while also celebrating all the parts of himself that survive in today's world. He also has a good sense of humour and made me laugh at several points.
I enjoyed it even more than This Wound is a World and look forward to his future poetry collections.
Some favourite poems:
A Country is How Men Hunt
"God sends his pale horsemen westward every fucking day! / Canadian history - or, how to wage war / on an emotion. For a century, / no one spoke of the extinction of joy. / A village emptied of its children is a haunting."
I Become Less of Who I Am by the Second
Cree Girl Blows Up the Necropolis of Ottawa
At the Mercy of the Sky (note: this one made me want to cry)
"If I could uninvent the words "priest" and "prayer," then the dead / could come back from the dead for at least a chance at revenge. / Revenge is more decolonial than justice."
"One day, the Government of Alberta / might make this place [residential school] into a historic site. / I can see it now: / a spectacle during which white politicians crawl / out of the bloody maw of the past, / smiling with the carcass of words / like "history" and "empathy" hanging from their lips. / They pretend the red on their skin is sunlight."
A Romance of the Present
"I make out with my imaginary NDN lover / in the ashes of every Canadian pastoral poem ever written"
Duplex (The Future's a Fist) (note: the language play was really strong here)
Regarding Death, I Turn to the Photon
Notes from the Field
Fragments Ending with a Requiem
I Believe I Exist
"Sometimes I want the language of a non-place, / but no language is placeless."
This was such a brilliant collection!
I read most of it aloud (and where I read in the park... I re-read aloud my favourite poems back at home) because Belcourt has such a wonderful way of playing with language, word choice, and tone.
He interrogates colonialism and explores queerness and indigeneity, while also celebrating all the parts of himself that survive in today's world. He also has a good sense of humour and made me laugh at several points.
I enjoyed it even more than This Wound is a World and look forward to his future poetry collections.
Some favourite poems:
A Country is How Men Hunt
"God sends his pale horsemen westward every fucking day! / Canadian history - or, how to wage war / on an emotion. For a century, / no one spoke of the extinction of joy. / A village emptied of its children is a haunting."
I Become Less of Who I Am by the Second
Cree Girl Blows Up the Necropolis of Ottawa
At the Mercy of the Sky (note: this one made me want to cry)
"If I could uninvent the words "priest" and "prayer," then the dead / could come back from the dead for at least a chance at revenge. / Revenge is more decolonial than justice."
"One day, the Government of Alberta / might make this place [residential school] into a historic site. / I can see it now: / a spectacle during which white politicians crawl / out of the bloody maw of the past, / smiling with the carcass of words / like "history" and "empathy" hanging from their lips. / They pretend the red on their skin is sunlight."
A Romance of the Present
"I make out with my imaginary NDN lover / in the ashes of every Canadian pastoral poem ever written"
Duplex (The Future's a Fist) (note: the language play was really strong here)
Regarding Death, I Turn to the Photon
Notes from the Field
Fragments Ending with a Requiem
I Believe I Exist
"Sometimes I want the language of a non-place, / but no language is placeless."
September 1, 2024
The first poem (A Country is How Men Hunt) sets the tone for this collection:
What constitutes an NDN? A myth doused in midnight? A soul in the shape of a clenched fist
Be prepared to think about current events (especially in Canada) on how NDNs feel historically, currently, and some visions of what could be.
Multiple references had me googling events and well as new vocabulary that was expertly used. These are trade-marks of all Billy-Ray's writing, which I prize. I should take immediate credit for reading this book twice, since I did! I like the first reading for the pure impact with the momentum of the piece. Then my immediate second reading of the poem, I pick items apart and contemplate my own personal feelings toward their impact to NDNs and Earth and me and everything.
In talking about the 8 Indigenous men where were hanged for their participation in the North-West Rebellion, at Battleford, Saskatchewan, in 1885, where the Indigenous children from the nearby Industrial School were forced to watch:
"Regarding Death, I Turn to the Photon"
Think, then, of the hanged men, who moved,
if only for a fraction of a second, as light
through those war-town children,
simultaneously making a brutish violence more brutish
and proving colonial power can't wholly seize the NDN body.
There is so much to be won and lost
in the long tradition of Canadian autopsy!
You have to catch your breath after reading the above final line of the poem. You MUST reflect. We all must reflect!
"The Terrible Beauty of the Reserve" points out:
Most who live here don't know they are in the ruins of a failed experiment of epic proportions. Teens blaze to feel the euphoria of being outside memory.
Billy-Ray's is open about being queer too:
"A lover's Discourse"
A boy in love with a boy
becomes an open window.
In every account of my adolescence,
I hurled myself at a prison
He speaks of the truths all NDN's feel:
Who but an NDN would know that some days truth is a ghost who shouts in the voice of no one in particular and other days it is a secret nostalgia poured into the coffee cups of the living?
The author's youth still clings to life:
So, each night I make love
the way one siphons gasoline
from an abandoned car:
as though I am running out of time.
He has visions of looking forward to a dream...
"Cree Girls Blows Up The Necropolis of Ottawa"
That is, the film wouldn't be about the bloodied hands of history or what it is to be but an object of sorrow in the eyes of the reconciler and the executioner alike. Instead, we would see the Cree girl solely through a low-angle shot and at no point would she be anything but a cartographer who charts a world in her own image and no one else's.
"At the Mercy of the Sky" the pain the NDNs feel is palpable:
Cages were made out of bodies, and then bodies out of anything left behind. This is the world we have inherited.
The first line from "A Romance of the Present" really sums up this entire book:
A poem is a room into which I shove my autobiographical self.
There is no problem mid-interpreting "Leonardo DiCaprio"
I have yet to see The Revenant,
but only because there ain't nothing special
about a settler who defies death
while NDNs drop like flies around him.
...
Had this been a movie made by NDNs,
that bear would have killed
Leonardo DiCaprio in the first ten minutes.
All these quotes so far come from the first 30 pages!
I have underlined items throughout this book.
The later half gets inventive with styles: Blackouts; First Words; Stories.
I really liked "Hypotheses" with dreams of possible poem ideas...
A poem in which whiteness is abolished, so it is also a poem in which we kick our shoes off for the first time.
A poem in which a museum is crowded by a murmuration of cops acquitted of murder; they march as one into a history of extinction.
I saw I was at my 100th book for 2024 (my goal!) so I pointedly read this particular book today. My milestone deserved this level of genius to read.
5*
What constitutes an NDN? A myth doused in midnight? A soul in the shape of a clenched fist
Be prepared to think about current events (especially in Canada) on how NDNs feel historically, currently, and some visions of what could be.
Multiple references had me googling events and well as new vocabulary that was expertly used. These are trade-marks of all Billy-Ray's writing, which I prize. I should take immediate credit for reading this book twice, since I did! I like the first reading for the pure impact with the momentum of the piece. Then my immediate second reading of the poem, I pick items apart and contemplate my own personal feelings toward their impact to NDNs and Earth and me and everything.
In talking about the 8 Indigenous men where were hanged for their participation in the North-West Rebellion, at Battleford, Saskatchewan, in 1885, where the Indigenous children from the nearby Industrial School were forced to watch:
"Regarding Death, I Turn to the Photon"
Think, then, of the hanged men, who moved,
if only for a fraction of a second, as light
through those war-town children,
simultaneously making a brutish violence more brutish
and proving colonial power can't wholly seize the NDN body.
There is so much to be won and lost
in the long tradition of Canadian autopsy!
You have to catch your breath after reading the above final line of the poem. You MUST reflect. We all must reflect!
"The Terrible Beauty of the Reserve" points out:
Most who live here don't know they are in the ruins of a failed experiment of epic proportions. Teens blaze to feel the euphoria of being outside memory.
Billy-Ray's is open about being queer too:
"A lover's Discourse"
A boy in love with a boy
becomes an open window.
In every account of my adolescence,
I hurled myself at a prison
He speaks of the truths all NDN's feel:
Who but an NDN would know that some days truth is a ghost who shouts in the voice of no one in particular and other days it is a secret nostalgia poured into the coffee cups of the living?
The author's youth still clings to life:
So, each night I make love
the way one siphons gasoline
from an abandoned car:
as though I am running out of time.
He has visions of looking forward to a dream...
"Cree Girls Blows Up The Necropolis of Ottawa"
That is, the film wouldn't be about the bloodied hands of history or what it is to be but an object of sorrow in the eyes of the reconciler and the executioner alike. Instead, we would see the Cree girl solely through a low-angle shot and at no point would she be anything but a cartographer who charts a world in her own image and no one else's.
"At the Mercy of the Sky" the pain the NDNs feel is palpable:
Cages were made out of bodies, and then bodies out of anything left behind. This is the world we have inherited.
The first line from "A Romance of the Present" really sums up this entire book:
A poem is a room into which I shove my autobiographical self.
There is no problem mid-interpreting "Leonardo DiCaprio"
I have yet to see The Revenant,
but only because there ain't nothing special
about a settler who defies death
while NDNs drop like flies around him.
...
Had this been a movie made by NDNs,
that bear would have killed
Leonardo DiCaprio in the first ten minutes.
All these quotes so far come from the first 30 pages!
I have underlined items throughout this book.
The later half gets inventive with styles: Blackouts; First Words; Stories.
I really liked "Hypotheses" with dreams of possible poem ideas...
A poem in which whiteness is abolished, so it is also a poem in which we kick our shoes off for the first time.
A poem in which a museum is crowded by a murmuration of cops acquitted of murder; they march as one into a history of extinction.
I saw I was at my 100th book for 2024 (my goal!) so I pointedly read this particular book today. My milestone deserved this level of genius to read.
5*
April 26, 2024
Billy-Ray Belcourt, my beloved
April 7, 2024
This is the world we have inherited.
It is infused with the violence of being forced to float
in the air like an unanswered question. p21
What use is a map when the world is labyrinthine?
What use is direction when there are exits at every turn?
p23 from the poem At The Mercy Of The Sky
Sometimes, too often, when I have been sucker-punched by a line or a moment in a book I have to shut it for a moment, clutching it to me, catching my breath, then gazing at the cover, waiting for my emotions to stop swirling. Maybe a good book can't be judged by its cover but a good meditation on a book can be had just holding it, looking deeply. Of course it helps if the cover is evocative, but in fact this is one of the few habits I have kept up all my reading life and even if the cover is bland or garish or in some way unappealing, it grounds me. I have been known to cover a book with paper like in high school if the cover is too disturbing. If I really hate a cover I won't touch the book.
There were enough sucker-punches in this slim volume that I got to know the cover well.
At first glance it is confusing. It seems like a simple photograph of a person with long black hair in a wheat-field maybe. Only the person is holding a log like a mask lengthwise over their face, so all that is visible of them is a shoulder and a curve of the neck and the brushed back hair and the hands, bound to the logs edge. There is something jutting out of the top of the log. Not such a simple photograph really. It was vaguely disturbing and I brushed by it at first. Each time I returned to it, burned by the sting of words inside, I noticed another detail that I could not believe that I missed. I will not spoil the experience for you, but it's another reason to get this book. It is not apparent on the thumbnail; it seems an appropriate metaphor for this NDN's expression of the undercover existence.
I bottle up my feelings. In my serrated hands
the bottle shatters. I am not free.
What is freedom to man
with shards of glass moving through him?..
Who but an NDN would know that some days truth is a ghost
who shouts....
from What To An NDN is the Intrinsic Goodness of Mankind.
p11
It isn't that we were escaping life, but that we were stranded by it.
from the poem Ars Poetica p55
The poems themselves are immediate and taut with explosive energy, most of them. Some of the poems are long and drawn out with pain and outrage; some are so experimental that it becomes evident that BRB is still struggling to find a form to contain his audacity. It should be no surprise that he has been a Rhodes scholar in 2016 and holds a masters degree in womens studies from Wadham College at Oxford University, and that this year he is an assistant professor at UBC. It does seem wonderfully astonishing that he is collecting prizes and accolades world wide.
The poem is a container for a beauty on the run from terror. Step inside.
We are traffic-jammed with joy here.
p 83 from Fragments Ending with a Requiem
It is infused with the violence of being forced to float
in the air like an unanswered question. p21
What use is a map when the world is labyrinthine?
What use is direction when there are exits at every turn?
p23 from the poem At The Mercy Of The Sky
Sometimes, too often, when I have been sucker-punched by a line or a moment in a book I have to shut it for a moment, clutching it to me, catching my breath, then gazing at the cover, waiting for my emotions to stop swirling. Maybe a good book can't be judged by its cover but a good meditation on a book can be had just holding it, looking deeply. Of course it helps if the cover is evocative, but in fact this is one of the few habits I have kept up all my reading life and even if the cover is bland or garish or in some way unappealing, it grounds me. I have been known to cover a book with paper like in high school if the cover is too disturbing. If I really hate a cover I won't touch the book.
There were enough sucker-punches in this slim volume that I got to know the cover well.
At first glance it is confusing. It seems like a simple photograph of a person with long black hair in a wheat-field maybe. Only the person is holding a log like a mask lengthwise over their face, so all that is visible of them is a shoulder and a curve of the neck and the brushed back hair and the hands, bound to the logs edge. There is something jutting out of the top of the log. Not such a simple photograph really. It was vaguely disturbing and I brushed by it at first. Each time I returned to it, burned by the sting of words inside, I noticed another detail that I could not believe that I missed. I will not spoil the experience for you, but it's another reason to get this book. It is not apparent on the thumbnail; it seems an appropriate metaphor for this NDN's expression of the undercover existence.
I bottle up my feelings. In my serrated hands
the bottle shatters. I am not free.
What is freedom to man
with shards of glass moving through him?..
Who but an NDN would know that some days truth is a ghost
who shouts....
from What To An NDN is the Intrinsic Goodness of Mankind.
p11
It isn't that we were escaping life, but that we were stranded by it.
from the poem Ars Poetica p55
The poems themselves are immediate and taut with explosive energy, most of them. Some of the poems are long and drawn out with pain and outrage; some are so experimental that it becomes evident that BRB is still struggling to find a form to contain his audacity. It should be no surprise that he has been a Rhodes scholar in 2016 and holds a masters degree in womens studies from Wadham College at Oxford University, and that this year he is an assistant professor at UBC. It does seem wonderfully astonishing that he is collecting prizes and accolades world wide.
The poem is a container for a beauty on the run from terror. Step inside.
We are traffic-jammed with joy here.
p 83 from Fragments Ending with a Requiem
November 30, 2023
I cannot stress this enough, I would pay to read Billy Ray Belcourt’s grocery lists. His words are so desperately needed in this world, and I’m so grateful to be around to read them.
———————————————————————————
“People love being alive so much
they will force aliveness
onto even a hypothesis of a man.
I am a man,
but only insofar as I spontaneously combust when the best possible world begins.
So, each night I make love
the way one siphons gasoline
from an abandoned car:
as though I am running out of time.
Truth is, I want even less
than this already puny life.”
“It is comforting to think of my gender as a farmer's field already rototilled, already tidied up.
I become less of who I am by the second.”
“We bathed in the acoustics of desire, in the density of a social music that wasn't the noise of the extraordinary. It went on like this for a few months: I was a metaphor he felt stomached by. Tripped up on the ecstasy of fragility, we nested into a debt we knew we couldn't shoulder on our own. No one could see what was there, so what was there was ours. Maybe my propensity for utopian thinking is positively correlated with the agony of being in a world poisonous for those who knowingly reside in the shadows of the not-yet. Maybe it is a coping mechanism. So what?”
“My tongue is a parking garage; men arrived with deflated tires.
What distinguishes denotation from detonation, after all, is human invention. Blood-letting a people with the alphabet is a gutting just the same.
One can't rule out the possibility of violence as a response to violence. Indeed, comprehension is kick-started by a seizure of visual information.
I ask questions that frustrate answerability. This is a form of violence. I pit language against itself and want nothing clean to come of it. This too is a form of violence.
All this talk of how poetry brings us closer to language, but what if its already left? Found a gentler species? Warmer mouths?”
———————————————————————————
“People love being alive so much
they will force aliveness
onto even a hypothesis of a man.
I am a man,
but only insofar as I spontaneously combust when the best possible world begins.
So, each night I make love
the way one siphons gasoline
from an abandoned car:
as though I am running out of time.
Truth is, I want even less
than this already puny life.”
“It is comforting to think of my gender as a farmer's field already rototilled, already tidied up.
I become less of who I am by the second.”
“We bathed in the acoustics of desire, in the density of a social music that wasn't the noise of the extraordinary. It went on like this for a few months: I was a metaphor he felt stomached by. Tripped up on the ecstasy of fragility, we nested into a debt we knew we couldn't shoulder on our own. No one could see what was there, so what was there was ours. Maybe my propensity for utopian thinking is positively correlated with the agony of being in a world poisonous for those who knowingly reside in the shadows of the not-yet. Maybe it is a coping mechanism. So what?”
“My tongue is a parking garage; men arrived with deflated tires.
What distinguishes denotation from detonation, after all, is human invention. Blood-letting a people with the alphabet is a gutting just the same.
One can't rule out the possibility of violence as a response to violence. Indeed, comprehension is kick-started by a seizure of visual information.
I ask questions that frustrate answerability. This is a form of violence. I pit language against itself and want nothing clean to come of it. This too is a form of violence.
All this talk of how poetry brings us closer to language, but what if its already left? Found a gentler species? Warmer mouths?”
October 22, 2019
“When I die, it will still be autumn in my body. / I trust he will dust my shadow off so as to watch it tangle / in dusk’s wild mane” NDN Homo Sonnet, 38.
“A poem in which a museum is crowded by a murmuration of cops / acquitted of murder; they march as one into a history of extinction” Hypothoses, 68.
“I want a world where there are no ghosts in the machine of relationality. Intimacy will not be a trap door. A trap door will not be a refuge. A refuge will not be whatever dulls the feeling of aliveness. Aliveness will not be hope against all odds.” Red Utopia, 74.
“In a bed, someone who is loved is found dead (from cancer or heart disease or mercury poisoning, which are history by other names)” Notes from the Field, 81.
“All this talk of poetry brings us closer to language, but what if it’s already left? Found a gentler species? Warmer mouths?” Fragments Ending with a Requiem, 84.
“What is a ghost to a ghost but photocopied pity?” I believe I exist, 85.
Vastly superior to the first collection, and the theory-prose-poems in the tail end are literally perfect. Incredible read. So much to return to and think about. Order this to your local libraries. Give this to folks at Christmas. It’s one of the best things I’ve read all year.
“A poem in which a museum is crowded by a murmuration of cops / acquitted of murder; they march as one into a history of extinction” Hypothoses, 68.
“I want a world where there are no ghosts in the machine of relationality. Intimacy will not be a trap door. A trap door will not be a refuge. A refuge will not be whatever dulls the feeling of aliveness. Aliveness will not be hope against all odds.” Red Utopia, 74.
“In a bed, someone who is loved is found dead (from cancer or heart disease or mercury poisoning, which are history by other names)” Notes from the Field, 81.
“All this talk of poetry brings us closer to language, but what if it’s already left? Found a gentler species? Warmer mouths?” Fragments Ending with a Requiem, 84.
“What is a ghost to a ghost but photocopied pity?” I believe I exist, 85.
Vastly superior to the first collection, and the theory-prose-poems in the tail end are literally perfect. Incredible read. So much to return to and think about. Order this to your local libraries. Give this to folks at Christmas. It’s one of the best things I’ve read all year.
September 23, 2019
I'm never not floored when I read something by Billy-Ray Belcourt.
What more can I say than Billy-Ray just "gets it" when it comes to when and where to deploy his myriad of tools? Funny in places, heart rending in others, it's hard to put into words what an experience reading this book was.
What more can I say than Billy-Ray just "gets it" when it comes to when and where to deploy his myriad of tools? Funny in places, heart rending in others, it's hard to put into words what an experience reading this book was.
December 6, 2019
BRB’s books are a heartbreaking experience, but also cathartic. The poetic equivalent of a deep tissue massage or feeling an old ache in your bones from when they were previously broken but now healed over.
Read
February 12, 2024so many powerful poems & lines throughout. so beautifully written, I can’t wait to read more Belcourt
September 11, 2024
“I douche while Kesha’s “Praying” plays from my iPhone on repeat…”
March 28, 2021
Through his modern and often experimental work, Canadian Billy-Ray Belcourt dives into contemporary indigineity in all its nuance and violence. There's queer identity, humor, love, and grief. It's as ethereal as it is fresh and down to earth.
Read
August 2, 2020Belcourt wrote one of my favourite books ever--This Wound is a World--a book DRIPPING with emotion and heart and PAIN. And, yet I couldn't connect with NDN Coping Mechanisms almost at all. It flew over my head. I couldn't find the heart in it--there were glimpses of it and I was grasping.
My problem with academic writing is the very nature of it: devoid of emotion. I feel frustrated when I can't FEEL the words. I judge this book to be heady and academic; not accessible to someone like me with a NEED for emotional connection.
Part of my disappointment or disconnection may be my reaction to being an outsider (a settler); I wasn't called-IN to this story. That's the part that I need to figure out: what are the ways in which my shame and fear gets in the way of connection...
And maybe this book just wasn't MEANT for me. I'm very open to that. Other people likely get A LOT out of this book. Not every story is meant to connect with every person (I just wish I was ABLE to connect with it. I'd like to THINK that I CAN connect with ANY person's story when I see the heart and feelings within it, but maybe that's just not the case. I don't know--truly).
My problem with academic writing is the very nature of it: devoid of emotion. I feel frustrated when I can't FEEL the words. I judge this book to be heady and academic; not accessible to someone like me with a NEED for emotional connection.
Part of my disappointment or disconnection may be my reaction to being an outsider (a settler); I wasn't called-IN to this story. That's the part that I need to figure out: what are the ways in which my shame and fear gets in the way of connection...
And maybe this book just wasn't MEANT for me. I'm very open to that. Other people likely get A LOT out of this book. Not every story is meant to connect with every person (I just wish I was ABLE to connect with it. I'd like to THINK that I CAN connect with ANY person's story when I see the heart and feelings within it, but maybe that's just not the case. I don't know--truly).
February 26, 2020
"What distinguishes denotation from detonation, after all, is human invention. Blood-letting a people with the alphabet is a gutting just the same."
There's a lyrical beauty in the way the historical and societal violence against indigenous peoples in Canada is explored in this collection. Fiercely personal and intimately vulnerable throughout, these poems will cling to you. There's something to celebrate and be humbled by when you encounter a voice that is so unapologetically pissed off about injustice and systemic violence.
There's a lyrical beauty in the way the historical and societal violence against indigenous peoples in Canada is explored in this collection. Fiercely personal and intimately vulnerable throughout, these poems will cling to you. There's something to celebrate and be humbled by when you encounter a voice that is so unapologetically pissed off about injustice and systemic violence.
July 3, 2021
Wow! Some incredibly powerful poems in this collection. Hard-hitting, devastating lines...and a bit of the soft and lush too. Well balanced, interesting draws from historical and contemporary events and sources, unique forms and perspectives. Still maintaining lyricism and beauty even in gritty, cutting poems. Cannot wait to read his backlisted title and anything forthcoming!
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February 1, 2020"Someone drops dead,
but he isn't white so no one is there to see it.
Expect everyone is there to see it,
they are just too busy thinking about how much
they have changed for the better to open their fucking eyes" - From the poem "I Believe I Exist"
but he isn't white so no one is there to see it.
Expect everyone is there to see it,
they are just too busy thinking about how much
they have changed for the better to open their fucking eyes" - From the poem "I Believe I Exist"
August 10, 2020
Reviews for me are like any kind of critique – an admission of how a piece of art reacts with self once it hits and/or pierces the skin. Here in a place like GoodReads I don’t review books that I read just for the simple pleasure of an easy sleep or a light laugh. I read a lot of books for that kind of reason. Belcourt isn’t a poet I pick up expecting the soothing balm of a barely-there breath on the body of me-the-reader.
I can’t say reading Belcourt is pleasant. It isn’t for me. It's painful and beautiful but never (so far) pleasant. There’s too much pain. Too much self-loathing, raw wounding, rage, residual poison from Belcourt’s ghost noting the “pleasure to be absorbed from the radicalized spectacle of contortion that is confessional poetry.” But of course Belcourt deserved that Griffin Poetry Prize.
True nourishment comes from these lines. In this book there are lines cast to folks drowning in the history of BIPOC (or other kinds of) invisibility and like some medicines, it can be bitter on the tongue, but it is also a kind of wandering doctor.
Letting the memory of those pages roll around in my consciousness, what I feel now is more like that buzzing helium-driven lightness that comes immediately after some particularly brutal pain lifts – like a migraine that is gone once bitter meds kick in and the day-time nap slides off like a blanket in a warm quiet room.
It’s not that I feel any kind of forgiveness coming off the page. I don’t. I don’t believe in forgiveness. As a concept it seems to me way too arrogant – who am I to forgive someone else’s bad behaviour – or hand that power over to someone else so that I can let go of my own past atrocities. Like Joseph Dandurand’s poetry, Belcourt seems to share a different kind of moral vision. To me it feels like a world that replaces forgiveness with honesty. Instead of rocketing the power of acceptance back and forth between the wounded and the wounding, it’s about being in that hot, wet space of truth. This was done. How do I walk from here?
Here’s the thing though. I am, like everyone else, in a building with the solid brick walls of an inherited belief system. I have a small window to see the world through. It looks out in a particular direction, but at least I am aware that I am that limited and don’t mistake my view for the world as it actually is. That’s why I know that my take on any book is just what any text makes me feel and understand. My take can never be about goodness, or excellence. Still, since I know about the hidden world behind the brick, I have been able to devise small mirrors on selfie sticks to peer a little further into the world. That’s how I think of education and the act of listening respectfully to others with windows facing another direction. I value the gift a wider view gives me, even if sometimes it shows a history and present I’d rather not dream about.
I can’t say reading Belcourt is pleasant. It isn’t for me. It's painful and beautiful but never (so far) pleasant. There’s too much pain. Too much self-loathing, raw wounding, rage, residual poison from Belcourt’s ghost noting the “pleasure to be absorbed from the radicalized spectacle of contortion that is confessional poetry.” But of course Belcourt deserved that Griffin Poetry Prize.
True nourishment comes from these lines. In this book there are lines cast to folks drowning in the history of BIPOC (or other kinds of) invisibility and like some medicines, it can be bitter on the tongue, but it is also a kind of wandering doctor.
Letting the memory of those pages roll around in my consciousness, what I feel now is more like that buzzing helium-driven lightness that comes immediately after some particularly brutal pain lifts – like a migraine that is gone once bitter meds kick in and the day-time nap slides off like a blanket in a warm quiet room.
It’s not that I feel any kind of forgiveness coming off the page. I don’t. I don’t believe in forgiveness. As a concept it seems to me way too arrogant – who am I to forgive someone else’s bad behaviour – or hand that power over to someone else so that I can let go of my own past atrocities. Like Joseph Dandurand’s poetry, Belcourt seems to share a different kind of moral vision. To me it feels like a world that replaces forgiveness with honesty. Instead of rocketing the power of acceptance back and forth between the wounded and the wounding, it’s about being in that hot, wet space of truth. This was done. How do I walk from here?
Here’s the thing though. I am, like everyone else, in a building with the solid brick walls of an inherited belief system. I have a small window to see the world through. It looks out in a particular direction, but at least I am aware that I am that limited and don’t mistake my view for the world as it actually is. That’s why I know that my take on any book is just what any text makes me feel and understand. My take can never be about goodness, or excellence. Still, since I know about the hidden world behind the brick, I have been able to devise small mirrors on selfie sticks to peer a little further into the world. That’s how I think of education and the act of listening respectfully to others with windows facing another direction. I value the gift a wider view gives me, even if sometimes it shows a history and present I’d rather not dream about.
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September 30, 2020This is a book I need to return to before I can rate it.
My feelings towards this book are summarized by two quotes from one of the poems: "In the end, it wasn't intelligibility we were after." & "I pit language against itself and want nothing clean to come of it."
I am relatively new to poetry and prose as a genre and I am still getting used to the writing style though I do recognize how powerful and beautiful it can be. Because the book deals with topics I am not as familiar with on personal level, the added complexity/ambiguity of the prose left me unable to connect with the poems and understand the nuance and depth of the ideas discussed.
By no means does this make this a bad book, in fact, even in my confusion, I was able to find beauty in how the words flowed and certain phrases were very poignant. However, this book was not written for me as the intended audience, and I need to work a bit harder on my next reread to connect with it more by reading more actively and thoughtfully.
My feelings towards this book are summarized by two quotes from one of the poems: "In the end, it wasn't intelligibility we were after." & "I pit language against itself and want nothing clean to come of it."
I am relatively new to poetry and prose as a genre and I am still getting used to the writing style though I do recognize how powerful and beautiful it can be. Because the book deals with topics I am not as familiar with on personal level, the added complexity/ambiguity of the prose left me unable to connect with the poems and understand the nuance and depth of the ideas discussed.
By no means does this make this a bad book, in fact, even in my confusion, I was able to find beauty in how the words flowed and certain phrases were very poignant. However, this book was not written for me as the intended audience, and I need to work a bit harder on my next reread to connect with it more by reading more actively and thoughtfully.
September 3, 2019
holy shit this is Incredible
November 27, 2020
2 smart 4 me. I'm excited to reread, and I'll need to do so with my phone handy for googling. Likely more notes to come as I digest and process. Very very very good.
December 7, 2020
I can’t think of a writer who’s work I admire more. he is a gift.
January 22, 2022
A remarkable work. Poignant, visceral, angry, heartbreaking.
March 20, 2022
More beautiful words from BRB. I will revisit this one as I did with This Wound is a World.
From Melancholy’s Form…
Melancholy: the hospice care of memory.
Billy Ray keeps getting better.
From Melancholy’s Form…
Melancholy: the hospice care of memory.
Billy Ray keeps getting better.
March 27, 2022
Definitely an author to watch and follow!
September 28, 2022
Reread, still love it, still blown away by his writing in all forms.
December 30, 2022
Brilliant, heart-wrenching, but also heart-affirming. Belcourt writes powerful theory in poetry form.
February 22, 2023
LOVED!!
March 25, 2023
farting, crying, reading foucault, reading billy-ray belcourt, repeat
Billy-Ray reading from NDN Coping Mechanisms starting at around 7 min: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CrolW...
Billy-Ray reading from NDN Coping Mechanisms starting at around 7 min: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CrolW...
July 20, 2022
I loved to let it wash over me
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