river woman

Governor General's Awardwinning Metis poet and acclaimed novelist Katherena Vermette's second collection, river woman, explores her relationship to nature - its destructive power and beauty, its timelessness, and its place in human history.

Award-winning Metis poet and novelist Katherena Vermette's second book of poetry, river woman, examines and celebrates love as decolonial action. Here love is defined as a force of reclamation and repair in times of trauma, and trauma is understood to exist within all times. The poems are grounded in what feels like an eternal present, documenting moments of clarity that lift the speaker (and reader) out of the illusion of linear experience. This is what we mean when we describe a work of art as being timeless.

Like the river they speak to, these poems return again and again to the same source in search of new ways to reconstruct what has been lost. Vermette suggests that it's through language and the body particularly through language as it lives inside the body that a fragmented self might resurface as once again whole. This idea of breaking apart and coming back together is woven throughout the collection as the speaker contemplates the ongoing negotiation between the city, the land, and the water, and as she finds herself falling into trust with the ones she loves.

Vermette honours the river as a woman her destructive power and beauty, her endurance, and her stories. These poems sing from a place where "words / transcend ceremony / into everyday" and "nothing / is inanimate."

“PRAISE FOR KATHERENA VERMETTE AND THE BREAK: WINNER, AMAZON.CA FIRST NOVEL AWARD WINNER, MARGARET LAURENCE AWARD FOR FICTION WINNER, CAROL SHIELDS WINNIPEG BOOK AWARD WINNER, MCNALLY ROBINSON BOOK OF THE YEAR WINNER, BURT AWARD FOR FIRST NATIONS, INUIT, AND MTIS YOUNG ADULT LITERATURE INDIGO HEATHER''S PICK CBC CANADA READS FINALIST NATIONAL BESTSELLER 2016 ROGERS WRITERS'' TRUST FICTION PRIZE FINALIST 2016 GOVERNOR GENERAL''S LITERARY AWARD FINALIST QUILL & QUIRE BOOK OF THE YEAR KOBO BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR 49TH SHELF BOOKS OF THE YEAR GLOBE AND MAIL BEST 100 BOOKS OF THE YEAR NATIONAL POST 99 BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR WALRUS MAGAZINE THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR CBC BEST CANADIAN DEBUT NOVELS OF THE YEAR "Katherena Vermette''s debut novel, The Break, takes a tough, close-up look at an extended family in Winnipeg, tackling along the way a side of female life that''s often hard to acknowledge: the violence of girls and women sometimes display towards other girls and women, and the power struggles among them. In The Break, the characters may be Mtis, but the motivations and emotions are surely universal. This is an accomplished writer who will go far." -- Margaret Atwood "Katherena Vermette is a tremendously gifted writer, a dazzling talent." -- Madeleine Thien, author of Do Not Say We Have Nothing "Katherena Vermette rendered the women of the North End gorgeous in her poetry, North End Love Songs. In The Break, she renders them sweet, beautiful battlers who love under the most horrific of circumstances." -- Lee Maracle, author of Celia''s Song "Vermette is a staggering talent." -- Eden Robinson, author of Monkey Beach "In Vermette''s poetic prose, The Break offers a stark portrayal of the adversity that plagues First Nations women in this country -- and the strength that helps them survive." -- Toronto Star "It''s unsurprising that a novel by a poet would be beautifully written . . . The Break is an astonishing act of empathy, and its conclusion is heartbreaking." -- Globe and Mail "With adeptness and sensitivity, Vermette puts a human face to issues that are too-often misunderstood, and in so doing, she has written a book that is both one of the most important of the year and one of the best. Though Katherena Vermette is not an emerging writer -- she has written seven children''s books and won a Governor General''s award for her poetry collection North End Love Songs -- for many, this novel will be their first encounter. And it will be a revelation. Vermette is a fully matured literary talent confronting some of our society''s fundamental problems through understated prose that exudes wisdom and emotion. Every page hides beauty amid suffering; love winning out over violence and hate. Stella, at one point in the novel, thinks about ''[a] story that didn''t happen to her but that she keeps and remembers.'' The Break is like that; it is a story that will stick with you a long time." -- National Post "The Break doesn''t read like an impressive first novel; it reads like a masterstroke from someone who knows what they''re doing . . . Vermette is skilled at writing with a language that is conversational and comfortable and with a poetic ease that makes the hard things easier to swallow. The result is a book that is at times emotionally demanding, funny, suspenseful, and always engaging." The Winnipeg Review "Stunning . . . [Vermette] chooses her words with a poet''s precision." -- Literary Review of Canada "Equal parts page-turner and stunning literary accomplishment." -- Open Book PRAISE FOR KATHERENA VERMETTE AND NORTH END LOVE SONGS: WINNER, GOVERNOR GENERAL''S LITERARY AWARD FOR POETRY SELECTION, "On the Same Page" (Manitoba''s provincial book club) "In spare, minimalist language, North End Love Songs attends to the demands of Indigenous and European poetics, braiding an elegant journey that takes us from Winnipeg''s North End out into the world." -- Governor General''s Literary Award jury citation "In North End Love Songs, Katherena Vermette uses spare language and brief, telling sketches to illuminate the aviary of a prairie neighbourhood. Vermette''s love songs are unconventional and imminent, an examination and a celebration of family and community in all weathers, the beautiful as well as the less clement conditions. This collection is a very moving tribute, to the girls and the women, the boys and the men, and the loving trouble that has forever transpired between us." -- Joanne Arnott "The love that sits at the core of Katherena Vermette''s North End Love Songs is not simple or serene, but pugnacious and ferocious, something to be alternately fled from as well as embraced. . . . Vermette''s poetry explores a landscape that she at once rejects . . . but elsewhere speaks of with a great sense of love and longing . . . These North End Love Songs are loud and heightened, but also possess a surprising vulnerability. The collection''s subjects are often wounded and sometimes disappear, as both the inner and outer landscapes that Vermette explores have the tendency to turn hostile. . . . North End Love Songs embraces the difficulties, the stumbling and the groping, and all the chilly, ugly elements than can nonetheless combine into a sense of place and home." --The Walrus "From a mixed-blood Mtis woman with Mennonite roots, Kate weaves a story that winds its way through the north end (Nor-tend) of Winnipeg. It''s a story of death, birth, survival, beauty, and ugliness; through it all there are glimmers of hope, strength, and a will to survive whatever this city throws at you." -- Duncan Mercredi "North End Love Songs . . . combines elegiac and fiercely ecstatic melodies to sing of a complicated love for a city, a river, and a neighbourhood. It is deep rooted in its location, yet will reach out to readers everywhere with its harsh and beautiful tunings of growing up female in Winnipeg''s North End." -- Prairie Fire”

"These spare, imagistic poems live up to the words of the Vietnamese spiritual leader Thich Nhat Hanh, quoted in an epigraph: ‘If our hearts are big, we can be like the river." — Toronto Star

"A book that is at once deeply personal and politically charged." — Quill and Quire

"Vermette’s new collection is a strong follow-up to her Governor General’s Award-winning debut, 2012’s North End Love Songs." — Winnipeg Free Press

KATHERENA VERMETTE (she/her) is a Red River Métis (Michif) writer from Treaty 1 territory. Her father’s roots run deep in this land, dating back over two centuries, and her mother’s side is Mennonite.Vermette received the Governor General’s Literary Award for Poetry for her first book, North End Love Songs, and wide acclaim for her second collection of poems, river woman. The Break, a novel, won many awards including the Amazon.ca First Novel Award, and was a bestseller in Canada. She holds an MFA from the University of British Columbia.Born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Katherena lives with her family in a cranky old house within skipping distance of the temperamental Red River.

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