This Is a Small Northern Town.

Kim Fahner is a poet and the author of You Must Imagine the Cold Here.

This small volume of poetry is, quite simply, heartbreakingly beautiful. In her first full-length collection of poetry, Deerchild explores the issues of identity and self-discovery. What does it mean to be from a small northern town? To be someone who is growing up Native in a white town full of miners? To be a girl? To find oneself? These are just a few of the questions addressed through Deerchild’s work.

She speaks of an INCO nickel mining town in the title poem, writing: “slow coffee shop days where talk of the mine and reheated gossip / are mixed into refill after refill then home at nickel mine shift change.” There are rhythms here that are endemic to so many small northern Canadian towns that depend on primary industries like mining and logging. In such towns, there are “dirty pickup trucks and slow indian cars / with baseball caps at the wheel.” In such towns, too, there are the nasty marks of racism—the fear of the “other” building until it is out of control and divisive.

In the poem “the trapline,” Deerchild writes of the pain Native Canadians have had to endure as a result of their oppression: “indians drink cheap sherry / lysol mouthwash / slur stories about loss / in residential school.” From warriors to lost souls, Deerchild evokes the melancholy anger that surges under the surface of a town. In the beautiful piece “mama making moccasins,” however, the poet speaks of the power and longevity of tradition as she writes: “thread anchored / in the pattern’s centre … flowers berries dancing vines / bloom from her fingers / a cree garden of eden.” Despite the pain, despite the heartache, there is continuation of culture in the passing down of tradition and storytelling. There is power here.

This Is a Small Northern Town is stunning in its scope and breadth. While it depicts the ordinary rhythms of a small town, and of the people who always seem to want to leave the north for the bigger cities of the south, this body of work speaks to larger, more universal ideas of self, identity, spirituality, and place.