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4.43 AVERAGE
4.43 AVERAGE
(indigenous queer intellectual) First read through is always just the first.
challenging
dark
informative
reflective
sad
slow-paced
challenging
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Content Warnings
Graphic: Racism, Violence
There are so many good pieces in this book! But I did find some of the poems a little bit tedious. The heavy use of academic / philosophy terms is often tongue in cheek, and I usually enjoy Belcourt's citational style, but the book gave a little too much grad school philosophy student essay at the end. That's not always a bad thing, but in my subjective reading at this particular moment I didn't love it.
Another amazing collection of Billy-Ray Belcourt's stunning poetry. This is as collaborative and referential as it is uniquely-voiced and original. I am officially a huge Belcourt stan at this point. I am in love with the way he writes and challenged by the way he thinks. Coping Mechanisms is at once a searing critique of the world as experienced by a queer NDN and a passionate manifesto for joy and utopia. It's a call to arms, an elegy and a love letter. Belcourt has a field day with language while dismantling and rejecting it. It's heart-shattering, disruptive, ambitious, revelatory, witty, playful, painful, provocative, and just genius. I loved every second of it.
challenging
emotional
reflective
Billy-Ray Belcourt's mixed-genre book NDN Coping Mechanisms made my dumb little brain work hard, but I am so grateful for it. I heard Belcourt deliver a lecture on poetry last year and I was absolutely floored by how sharp, how wickedly intelligent, how astute and incisive and direct he is, while still embodying a generosity and softness for readers and listeners willing to do the work. This book is no exception. It aches and it rages and it yearns and it teaches, and I am so grateful for every book that is so kind as to teach and rage at the same time. I'm out of practice when it comes to writing about the writing of a book, so this non-review contains just my feelings, and all my gratitude.
emotional
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
4.5 stars bumping up to a 5 on Goodreads
This was such a brilliant collection!
I read most of it aloud (and where I read in the park... I re-read aloud my favourite poems back at home) because Belcourt has such a wonderful way of playing with language, word choice, and tone.
He interrogates colonialism and explores queerness and indigeneity, while also celebrating all the parts of himself that survive in today's world. He also has a good sense of humour and made me laugh at several points.
I enjoyed it even more than This Wound is a World and look forward to his future poetry collections.
Some favourite poems:
A Country is How Men Hunt
"God sends his pale horsemen westward every fucking day! / Canadian history - or, how to wage war / on an emotion. For a century, / no one spoke of the extinction of joy. / A village emptied of its children is a haunting."
I Become Less of Who I Am by the Second
Cree Girl Blows Up the Necropolis of Ottawa
At the Mercy of the Sky (note: this one made me want to cry)
"If I could uninvent the words "priest" and "prayer," then the dead / could come back from the dead for at least a chance at revenge. / Revenge is more decolonial than justice."
"One day, the Government of Alberta / might make this place [residential school] into a historic site. / I can see it now: / a spectacle during which white politicians crawl / out of the bloody maw of the past, / smiling with the carcass of words / like "history" and "empathy" hanging from their lips. / They pretend the red on their skin is sunlight."
A Romance of the Present
"I make out with my imaginary NDN lover / in the ashes of every Canadian pastoral poem ever written"
Duplex (The Future's a Fist) (note: the language play was really strong here)
Regarding Death, I Turn to the Photon
Notes from the Field
Fragments Ending with a Requiem
I Believe I Exist
"Sometimes I want the language of a non-place, / but no language is placeless."
This was such a brilliant collection!
I read most of it aloud (and where I read in the park... I re-read aloud my favourite poems back at home) because Belcourt has such a wonderful way of playing with language, word choice, and tone.
He interrogates colonialism and explores queerness and indigeneity, while also celebrating all the parts of himself that survive in today's world. He also has a good sense of humour and made me laugh at several points.
I enjoyed it even more than This Wound is a World and look forward to his future poetry collections.
Some favourite poems:
A Country is How Men Hunt
"God sends his pale horsemen westward every fucking day! / Canadian history - or, how to wage war / on an emotion. For a century, / no one spoke of the extinction of joy. / A village emptied of its children is a haunting."
I Become Less of Who I Am by the Second
Cree Girl Blows Up the Necropolis of Ottawa
At the Mercy of the Sky (note: this one made me want to cry)
"If I could uninvent the words "priest" and "prayer," then the dead / could come back from the dead for at least a chance at revenge. / Revenge is more decolonial than justice."
"One day, the Government of Alberta / might make this place [residential school] into a historic site. / I can see it now: / a spectacle during which white politicians crawl / out of the bloody maw of the past, / smiling with the carcass of words / like "history" and "empathy" hanging from their lips. / They pretend the red on their skin is sunlight."
A Romance of the Present
"I make out with my imaginary NDN lover / in the ashes of every Canadian pastoral poem ever written"
Duplex (The Future's a Fist) (note: the language play was really strong here)
Regarding Death, I Turn to the Photon
Notes from the Field
Fragments Ending with a Requiem
I Believe I Exist
"Sometimes I want the language of a non-place, / but no language is placeless."
challenging
reflective
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
medium-paced