Gregory Scofield is one of Canada's most renowned Aboriginal writers, whose collections include kipocihkan: Poems New & Selected, I Knew Two Metis Women, and Love Medicine and One Song. His unique style blends oral storytelling, song, spoken word and the Cree language. His poetry and memoir, Thunder Through My Veins (1999), is widely taught across Canada and the U.S.
Through Scofield's vivid language, readers hear [his ancestors']
voices and songs, imagine the poet's mother strumming her guitar,
and see steam rising up from a cup of Red Rose tea ... his new
poems offer up hidden treasures to the perceptive and patient
reader.
--Arc Poetry Magazine
Gregory Scofield's Kipocihkân combines ten new poems with
relatively short selections from the poet's five previous volumes,
which range from The Gathering (1993) to Singing Home the Bones
(2005) ... The introductory poem, "kipocihkân," is a tour de force
of code-switching, alternating between Cree, English, Hebrew, and
Yiddish, the juxtaposition of languages enacting Scofield's account
of how he came to be a poet; his is a complex family history, full
of both violence and sacred stories ... This reality, for Scofield,
includes traumatic events of past and present, from "the day Riel
slipped through the gallows" to "the halls of psych wards" to "a
pile of broken bones." Thus the book must begin with ceremony, with
prayer for survival: "Ba-ruch A-tah Ado-nai," he writes,
"pîmatisiwin petamawinân." Scofield gives thanks, and, almost in
the same breath, asks for life. "I'll teach you Cree," he promises.
He does, and much else besides.
-- Nicholas Bradley, Canadian Literature
Touching and poignant, if not tragic, kipocihkân is a fine and
recommended volume of poetry.
--Midwest Book Review (Wisconsin)
kipocihkân rewards readers through its excellent, tight composition
... His writing sings out a profound honesty about the complexity
of life, identity, and heritage from a Metis perspective that
continues to promise strong future work.
--Kit Dobson, The Goose
This retrospective of award-winning poet and memoirist Scofield's
most pivotal work to date draws on his five previous collections of
poetry.
--Prairie Books NOW
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