Annie Pootoogook
INUIT ARTIST POOTOOGOOK WINS $50,000 SOBEY ART AWARD
My name is Annie.
Annie as a girl, her braids, smashing bottles out back
at the bed of her bedridden gran, drawing
remembering
remembering
the boy licking clean his shiny white plastic plate
crumbs of Ritz crackers, the crumbs
always those square tile floors, those clocks
clocks strikes her
eyes like hers in the reflection of the neon-lit
frozen aisle, its fish sticks and hungry mans
the used yellow noose that failed his brother
remembering
remembering
the eighty-eight days she spent on that bed
beaten by two-by-fours, his words, I’ll kill
you when I get back. She found a window, a way
the coloured pencils these scenes
they say, difficult poignant profound
I cannot draw anything that I myself did not experience.
What she doesn’t draw what she doesn’t see
is Annie, late nineties, that time between
laying over paper in Kinngait, the studio
spirit insistent with her fingers, the ink
smuggling love, light of the sun
days, all spring all coughy laughter
like old women, like lullabies
like a child, smiling
Our life is going up and down.
Up and down. Happy. Not happy. Happy.
Not happy. That’s what I drew. Like that.
A REVOLUTIONARY INUIT ARTIST’S LIFE IMITATES HER ART, DARKLY
Beer store unlocks the door, it begins
but she draws anyway, has to draw
I have to follow my grandma and my mom.
For money, for him, for the hunger
of the south, the north
the black-horned devil
who keeps her on her knees, strips
pricks the light right off her tongue, her heart
the man, no better
slaps Annie around, kicks her
out, in bare feet, in snow, in all that dark
I had to go look for boots.
Down the street, an exhibition
Annie Pootoogook, Annie the revolutionary
talented brilliant contemporary Inuk artist
a northern star
tongue thick with drink on the sidewalk
drawing boots and clocks, the black-jacketed
journalists who quizzed her when she won the Sobey
now stuffing cameras down her face, wrinkled
red bloated dry still warm as the moon
nearer eighty she looks but she’s forty-three
and now,
now she’s expecting
I want an apartment. I want to start drawing. Take care of the baby.
Things to turn around, the baby
comes at four in the morning in a stall
at the Shepherds of Good Hope shelter
on Murray Street where the red lights
of the ambulance circle, pause
for the girl, early by a month three pounds
Napachie, for Annie’s artist mother
I could go dancing.
The Children’s Aid Society finds Napachie
a family, a house soft-glittery
with Minnie’s light-up ears
birthday balloons, brothers, a sister-cousin
who draws Napachie with her on a bridge
fish below blowing bubbles up, up, up
turns four two days after
INUIT ARTIST ANNIE POOTOOGOOK FOUND DEAD IN RIDEAU RIVER
Annie, found wading
in the water, 8:50 AM
police say she drowned, who knows who knows
say it’s not suspicious
but her people know
no one walks into the water
They fly her bones
back across the bay, to the Cape
They find the last drawing, they think
sketched six months before, Annie
sitting sock feet crossed fingers
linked at her heart, curls
of light she called it In love
They’ll never forget her
They’ll never forget her
They’ll never forget her