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"I used to live in the Arctic," writes Heather Simeney MacLeod, "a place where my Indian blood found room to live, elliptical it moved within me, solid as snow." A member of the Métis Nation Northwest Territories, MacLeod is a poet and playwright who came to live in the Thompson-Nicola Valley during the writing and publication of The Burden of Snow (Turnstone, 2004 $15.95), a poetry collection in which she traces "bloodlines, trap lines and ancestral migrations from Ireland, Scotland and Russia to the British Columbia interior." While living in Victoria, she published a collection of poetry, my flesh the sound of rain (1998).
MacLeod spent some of her teenage years in Carcross, "world's smallest desert, once a glacial lake," and recalls her varied past in a prose poem called 'Ask Me Anything: Yellowknife'. "I know how to use an ulu; I've seen an Inukshuk in the midnight sun on the Barrenlands. Ask me anything. I have eaten whitefish, pike and char; I've served muskox burgers at the Wildcat Café. I worked the dishpit before the dishwasher went in and wore raingear and rubber boots and watched through the flapping of the screen door as Dave wind-surfed over Back Bay. I fed Tracy's dog, Bug, scraps from plates, drank coffee with Baileys through my shift and went back in the middle of the night, after the bars closed, for wine, beer, a snack. Ask me anything. I swam nude in Long and Great Slave lakes; had picnics in the cemetery. Ask me anything. I remember The Rec Hall, the worn path between it and The Range; I remember Saturday afternoon jams with Mark Bogan singing Wild Thing (Wild meat, you make a great treat; muskox, I gotta get lots)..."
Her other books include My Flesh the Sound of Rain, Shapes of Orion and The North Woods.
BOOKS:
My Flesh the Sound of Rain (Coteau, 1998)
Shapes of Orion (Smoking Lung, 2000)
The North Woods, co-author (2003, Rattapallax Press)
The Burden of Snow, poetry (Turnstone, 2004)
[BCBW 2004]
MacLeod spent some of her teenage years in Carcross, "world's smallest desert, once a glacial lake," and recalls her varied past in a prose poem called 'Ask Me Anything: Yellowknife'. "I know how to use an ulu; I've seen an Inukshuk in the midnight sun on the Barrenlands. Ask me anything. I have eaten whitefish, pike and char; I've served muskox burgers at the Wildcat Café. I worked the dishpit before the dishwasher went in and wore raingear and rubber boots and watched through the flapping of the screen door as Dave wind-surfed over Back Bay. I fed Tracy's dog, Bug, scraps from plates, drank coffee with Baileys through my shift and went back in the middle of the night, after the bars closed, for wine, beer, a snack. Ask me anything. I swam nude in Long and Great Slave lakes; had picnics in the cemetery. Ask me anything. I remember The Rec Hall, the worn path between it and The Range; I remember Saturday afternoon jams with Mark Bogan singing Wild Thing (Wild meat, you make a great treat; muskox, I gotta get lots)..."
Her other books include My Flesh the Sound of Rain, Shapes of Orion and The North Woods.
BOOKS:
My Flesh the Sound of Rain (Coteau, 1998)
Shapes of Orion (Smoking Lung, 2000)
The North Woods, co-author (2003, Rattapallax Press)
The Burden of Snow, poetry (Turnstone, 2004)
[BCBW 2004]
