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Enlarge Cover
list price: $16.95
edition:Paperback
category: Poetry
published: Sep 2014
ISBN:9780889229112
publisher:
Talonbooks
Description
Mohawk spoken-word artist Janet Marie Rogers’s newest collection pulses with the rhythms of the drum and the beat of the heart. Poems drawing on the language of the earth and inflected with the outspoken vocality of activism address the crises of modern “land wars”—environmental destruction, territorial disputes, and resource depletion.
Contributor Notes
Janet Rogers is a celebrated spoken-word media artist and radio host. A Mohawk writer from the Six Nations band in southern Ontario, Rogers was born in Vancouver, British Columbia, and has resided in Victoria since 1994. She began her creative career as a visual artist, and began writing in 1996. Since then, she continues to stretch her abilities as a writer working and studying in the genres of poetry, short fiction, science fiction, play writing, and spoken-word performance poetry.
She has three published poetry collections to date: Splitting the Heart (Ekstasis Editions, 2007); Red Erotic (Ojistah Publishing, 2010); and Unearthed (Leaf Press, 2011).
In 2012, she was selected as the City of Victoria's third Poet Laureate for a three-year term ending November 30, 2014.
Janet Rogers hosts Native Waves Radio on CFUV 101.9 FM and Tribal Clefs every Tuesday on CBC Radio One. Her video poem "What Did You Do, Boy," created in support of a spoken word track from her CD Firewater, earned nominations at the Canadian Aboriginal Music Awards in 2009 and the Native American Music Awards in 2010. Rogers's radio documentary "Bring Your Drum (50 Years of Indigenous Protest Music)," aired in July 2011 on CBC's Inside the Music and won the Best Radio award at the imagineNATIVE Film and Media Festival in 2011.
Editorial Reviews
“There’s no place to hide in the poetry of Janet Rogers. For her, memory is a pen, a tool of vindication creating a new literature that breathes with nature and roars when it does. But nature in Peace in Duress is given by the land, and unnatural acts of history are to be countered in the poetic with a longing, chanting voice for word-medicine, justice, and reclamation beyond language. Rogers’s poetry marks the terrain with sounds braided in history and soars like the songs of a politically tuned cosmic map-maker who dares to delve into personal journey. Lyrically astute, faithful, and full of fire. Fierce and rightfully righteous! Rogers has written a Magna Carta for our times.”
—Lillian Allen
“I have read so many poets (and artists’ manifestos) that basically baffle you with bullshit and word play and deliver no substance as you check yourself to see if you been robbed of something valuable, besides the time to read or endure it. But you will be rewarded by [Rogers’s] poetry … she will fill your pockets and your hearts with things you can use in everyday life and struggles.”
—Alex Jacobs, Indian Country Today Media Network
“Janet Rogers holds nothing back in her new book of poetry. If blood is to be exposed in this land, then her words will spill it. She unmasks issues people are too afraid to see. She tells it like it is and, with a true poetic voice, there is no need for apology.”
—Garry Gottfriedson
“Peace in Duress is a statement on the nature of the Two-Row Wampum treaty agreement between the Haudenosaunee or Six Nations peoples and the Canadian State, as Rogers sees it. Rogers’ poems attest that the agreement does not fare well, that there are many troubles brewing under the surface, it is these things that she brings to light through her powerful words. … through her poetry and performances, people will begin to understand that ‘Peace’ with Indigenous Peoples of these lands was indeed wrought under duress. Read and revel in the poetry of Janet Rogers and you will see that she offers an idea that now is the time to renegotiate the terms for ‘Peace.’”
—Muskrat Magazine
