An appeal to ‘the adult child within’
Cree author invites laughter while honouring Indigenous culture in her latest collection
Louise B. Halfe, whose Cree name is Sky Dancer, describes awâsis, the character who animates the exuberant poems in her fifth collection, “awâsis — kinky and dishevelled,” as “ê-pimohtêt,” which means “walking with life in her heart.” It’s a fitting description of the book itself.
In February, Halfe was named Canada’s ninth parliamentary poet laureate. The first Indigenous writer to hold that post, she grew up on Saddle Lake Reserve in Alberta and attended Blue Quills Residential School. She has won numerous awards, including the 2017 Saskatchewan Book Award for her previous collection, “Burning in This Midnight Dream,” which chronicles the trauma and painful legacy of residential school.
This new book, though, is a gifted storyteller’s invitation to laugh. In the acknowledgments, Halfe describes awâsis as “the adult child within” but also points out that the word translates as “being lent a spiritual being.” In these poems, awâsis is a shape-shifting, gender-fluid character with “a Pinocchio nose/and disobedient eyes”; much of the comedy is slapstick and there’s nothing about bodily functions (like sex or farting) that embarrasses him/her.
In the opening poem, Halfe assumes the persona of the storyteller who has been chosen to “share these droll/adventures,” and describes awâsis as “a rubber-lipped horse,/an obnoxious mouse … The owl wisdom of her face/is the skylight of my dreams.” Throughout the book, awâsis also slips back and forth between genders (“He-she is a shehe/who loves a slippery, stretchy yarn”).
The scenarios range from camping to world travels, and encounters with characters like Big Moose Ears, Steals My Heart and Babble Mouth. Some of the humour has a sly edge. Halfe, who frequently uses Cree words, reminds us, “English is not the First Word,” and plays with spelling/meaning; in one poem, awâsis attends a “bored meeting” and deals with “numb-burrs.”
Several poems feature Little Whiteman, who serves as a comic foil, though the humour at his expense is affectionate, not mean-spirited. In “Always Falling In” awâsis is on a portage with Little Whiteman, and deliberately falls in the water and laughs, but instead of sharing in the mirth, “in a flat voice Little Whiteman told her,/‘Those stunts are hard on the canoe.’”
There’s also a serious side to these poems, in honouring Indigenous culture. In “Proselytizers” awâsis responds to Christian preachers who want to convert her by turning to the healing wisdom of ceremony, which brings “the sunburst of dawn,/where the red-robed sky spread/and lifted the heart.”
In her poem-introduction, the Métis elder Maria Campbell describes a dream of seeing the author “holding a wee small bag” so stuffed with music and laughter it can hardly be contained. Fortunately, Canada’s new poet laureate has found a way to capture that boisterous music and laughter in these entertaining poems.