Term as poet laureate draws to a close for Halfe

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After two years of serving as Saskatchewan's poet laureate, Louise Halfe handed the reigns over to Robert Currie on Jan. 1.

Halfe, who is also known as Sky Dancer, said she found great satisfaction in travelling throughout the province and interacting with the people during her time in the role.

Halfe travelled the province extensively almost 25 years ago and doing it for a second time through her position was a real eye opener for the respected writer.

"It gave me fresh eyes to appreciate the province and what it all has to offer and the beauty and the secrets of Saskatchewan," Halfe said. "The other thing I loved about the position was the dialoguing that I had with the students because I often asked questions of them in terms of their own experiences and their perceptions about the arts and poetry."

Halfe's earliest writing was published in Writing the Circle: Native Women of Western Canada, an anthology of writing by Native women.

She's also published two collections of poetry, Bear Bones & Feathers, published in 1994, and Blue Marrow, published in 1997. Blue Marrow was named to the short list for the Governor General's Award in 1998.

During her two years as the poet laureate, Halfe said her focus was dialoguing, especially on the historical impact of the people and what the residential school has done to communities and families. She addresses those issues in her work.

Halfe writes her poetry in story form, she explained.

"So what happens is when you're reading the poem, it leads you to the places where you need to go and that's the exploration of writing," she said.

"I don't tell the story, I share the story. And so it's showing rather than telling."

Halfe said that, rather than just talk about the loss of culture, she will demonstrate that loss by saying, "Our people knew medicines before and had the sweat lodge."

Another example of how Halfe addresses the loneliness that the residential school survivors experienced and the stark shame they were exposed to is by describing what happened in a way that will lead the reader into thought.

"They gave you three sheets of toilet paper to fold and refold with a hundred little squares of shit re-squeezed inside my heart, " she said, quoting from one of her poems."So that particular piece addresses the shame and the humiliation of that particular student, rather than just saying 'shame and humiliation,' which don't say a thing."

Halfe began writing at the age of 16, not in hopes of having her work published, but as a hidden form of expression.

"I wrote about family violence that I grew up with and just the loneliness of being a teenager struggling to self-identify," Halfe said.

Halfe has completed work on her third book, Crooked Good, a long narrative poem that will likely be released in the fall of 2007.

The book, which will be published by Coteau Books, is based on a legend called the rolling head, which Halfe has woven into the lives of several different people.

"The theme, I suppose, is withheld love and how people obsess about love," said Halfe.

Halfe points out that this book is not written from personal experiences but rather from stories she's heard or researched.

"The problem with our people is that everything, they think, written by an Aboriginal person is from a personal place and only two per cent of written material is coming from that place," she said.