Skin Like Mine
Skin Like Mine
by Garry Gottfriedson
$15.95
- Spring 2010
- ISBN 978-1-55380-101-6
- 6″ x 9″ Trade Paperback, 122 pages
- First Nations, Poetry
In Skin Like Mine, Garry Gottfriedson offers a suite of poems that peel away the skin of contemporary first nations society to reveal an inside view of individual experience.
Gottfriedson speaks of “minds full of anticipation” yet with “tongues pointing arrowheads.” Today’s youth, he says, are “afraid of themselves.” He finds that both individuals and bands end in “tangles,” that they write “nonsense words in the sand” or exploit images painted on rocks, those “the postmodern Indian calls / visual poetic expression.”
As the collection continues, however, Gottfriedson’s love for the land emerges. He draws attention to the rape of the natural environment, the skin of Mother Earth, through clear-cut logging. He speaks of the damage caused by the pine beetle, of “forests being / eaten from the inside out.” And here it is that Gottfriedson introduces the mysterious Horsechild, who is to prepare the drying racks for the returning salmon “so that beneath your skin / the mountains will be forever abundant”: a prayer for us to protect the migrating salmon on their multi-year cycles, to protect the bears and eagles that feast upon them, so as to assure that the transformations will continue, that there will be abundance for both humans and the earth itself.
Click here to read an excerpt from Skin Like Mine.
Reviews & Awards:
- Shortlisted for the Canadian Authors Association Award for Poetry, 2011
“A beautiful and complex collection of poems.”
—CM Magazine“This is a poet who cannot be pinned down. . . . Accessible plain talk, not literary poetry, with terrific speech rhythms. . . .These poems describe a wide emotional arc. . . . Skin Like Mine is an eye opener.”
—BC BookWorld“Politically potent, culturally contemporary, and sensually seductive, as images of crows, sky, dance, and horses work to touch the surface of and get beneath our various scarred and weathered skins.”
—Prairie books NOW“A mesmerizing cacophony of identity. . . . Skin Like Mine is so finely crafted that it will fascinate new and experienced readers of First Nations literature.”
—Canadian Literature“Poetry by Garry Gottfriedson is like no other. His span includes for example: religion, treaties, horses, race, suicide, other creatures, feelings, and reflections from his youth. Gottfriedson takes the day-to-day to historical scenes and bounces into the future. If you like poetry you will enjoy the breadth and depth of… Skin Like Mine.”
—Anishinabek News“Gottfriedson is a modern narrative poet whose poems are full of his heritage, Mother Earth is a Deity, and there is no space between the natural world and man. But this is no Dances With Wolves fairy tale, instead these poems deal intelligently with the task of being aboriginal in a difficult world.”
—Michael Dennis
