Crow Gulch

Winner, E.J. Pratt Poetry Award
Shortlisted, NL Reads
Shortlisted, Derek Walcott Prize for Poetry
Shortlisted, Raymond Souster Award
Longlisted, First Nation Communities READ Award

From the author: I cannot let the story of Crow Gulch — the story of my family and, subsequently, my own story — go untold. This book is my attempt to resurrect dialogue and story, to honour who and where I come from, to remind Corner Brook of the glaring omission in its social history.

In his debut poetry collection, Douglas Walbourne-Gough reflects on the legacy of a community that sat on the shore of the Bay of Islands, less than two kilometres west of downtown Corner Brook.

Crow Gulch began as a temporary shack town to house migrant workers in the 1920s during the construction of the pulp and paper mill. After the mill was complete, some of the residents, many of Indigenous ancestry, settled there permanently — including the poet's great-grandmother Amelia Campbell and her daughter, Ella — and those the locals called the "jackytars," a derogatory epithet used to describe someone of mixed French and Mi'kmaq descent. Many remained there until the late 1970s, when the settlement was forcibly abandoned and largely forgotten.

Walbourne-Gough lyrically sifts through archival memory and family accounts, resurrecting story and conversation, to patch together a history of a people and place. Here he finds his own identity within the legacy of Crow Gulch and reminds those who have forgotten of a glaring omission in history.

Winner of E.J. Pratt Poetry Award 2021 (Canada) Short-listed for Derek Walcott Prize for Poetry 2020 (United States) Short-listed for Raymond Souster Award 2020 (Canada) Short-listed for NL Reads 2021 (Canada) Long-listed for First Nation Communities READ Award 2020 (Canada)

“"Walbourne-Gough uses poetry to fight the erasure of a harsh, mercurial, yet beloved place -- and of a community for whom the future has both a 'blank stare' and a 'brilliant, polished edge.' These poems convey the sensibilities of racialized, marginalized, working-class people whose rough lives are peppered with small pleasures like a warm featherbed and trout fishing with family."”

“Crow Gulch announces an important poet. The differences Douglas Walbourne-Gough explores between class and ethnicities are as hard as Newfoundland’s rock, as shifting as the foundations of a forcibly resettled Crow Gulch. This book is a conversation between a rude landscape, the displaced or dispossessed, and a narrator searching for belonging.” -- Stephanie McKenzie, author of Before the Country: Native Renaissance, Canadian Mythology
“One of the most captivating elements of Douglas Walbourne-Gough’s Crow Gulch is the powerful humanism running through the collection.” -- James M. Fisher The Miramichi Reader
“A small stone, warm to the touch, mostly smooth but with just enough rough, satisfying edges to run your thumb along. That is the texture of Douglas Walbourne-Gough’s debut poetry book, Crow Gulch. It is a book of ‘hard beauty.’ . . . It is a stone worth keeping and returning to.” -- Emily Skov-Nielsen The Fiddlehead
“Walbourne-Gough is so aware of and precise with words. . . . He disinters the houses, neighbours, and family from their scrapped, shunted-aside history, while reimaging and releasing his own past. Crow Gulch is superb.” -- Joan Sullivan The Telegram
“Engaging, tender, and astute. . . . Crow Gulch shows us a poet with a distinct style and pioint of view.” -- Annick MacAskill Atlantic Books Today

Douglas Walbourne-Gough is a poet and mixed/adopted status member of the Qalipu Mi’kmaq First Nation from Elmastukwek (the Bay of Islands), Ktaqmkuk (Newfoundland). His poetry has appeared in numerous publications, including Best Canadian Poetry in English, Grain, and the Fiddlehead, and has won the Riddle Fence Poetry Prize.Walbourne-Gough’s debut collection, Crow Gulch, won the E.J. Pratt Poetry Award. It was also a finalist for NL Reads, the Derek Walcott Prize for Poetry, and the Raymond Souster Award, and was longlisted for the First Nations Community READS Award. Island is his second book of poetry.

Poet. Newfoundlander. Mixed/adopted Mi'kmaq. For Douglas Walbourne-Gough, life is hyphenated.

Winner, E.J. Pratt Poetry Award Shortlisted, NL Reads, Derek Walcott Prize for Poetry and Raymond Souster Award Longlisted, First Nation Communities READ Award From the author: I cannot let the story of Crow Gulch -- the story of my family and, subsequently, my own story -- go untold. This book is my attempt to resurrect dialogue and story, to honour who and where I come from, to remind Corner Brook of the glaring omission in its social history. In his debut poetry collection, Douglas Walbourne-Gough reflects on the legacy of a community that sat on the shore of the Bay of Islands, less than two kilometres west of downtown Corner Brook. Crow Gulch began as a temporary shack town to house migrant workers in the 1920s during the construction of the pulp and paper mill. After the mill was complete, some of the residents, many of Indigenous ancestry, settled there permanently -- including the poet's great-grandmother Amelia Campbell and her daughter, Ella -- and those the locals called the "jackytars," a derogatory epithet used to describe someone of mixed French and Mi'kmaq descent. Many remained there until the late 1970s, when the settlement was forcibly abandoned and largely forgotten. Walbourne-Gough lyrically sifts through archival memory and family accounts, resurrecting story and conversation, to patch together a history of a people and place. Here he finds his own identity within the legacy of Crow Gulch and reminds those who have forgotten of a glaring omission in history.

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