Metis poets' first offering a vivid journey through two cultures

The Gathering

Stones For The Medicine Wheel

Gregory Scofield

Polestar Press, distributed Raincoast books

96 pages

Suggested retail price $12.95 - paperback

Page R7

Gregory Scofield would make a good journalist. The Metis poet creates a vivid sense of atmosphere and emotion with a few well chosen words that put the reader smack in the middle of his world.

The poems in Scofield's first book are short and sharp, pictures of a journey through two cultures, from his homes in northern Canada to skid row in Vancouver. They grab the reader the heart, squeezing it in a grip of rage, sorrow, and even humor. Like good black and white photographs, Scofield's poems are stark and expressive, piercing visions of a life run full circle, from being brutalized alcohol, to a physical and spiritual recovery.

Scofield was born in British Columbia and raised in northern Manitoba, Saskatchewan and the Yukon. The 59 poems included in The Gathering trace Scofield's experiences as a child in small, northern communities, to sewing moccasins for trade, scrounging for booze money, then becoming sober and more centered.

One haunting poem calls for a long-lost friend who sheltered him as a boy.

His voice a harp to soothe my childhood fears

so long ago

this memory of you and me hiding out back

peering down from the safety of our maple tree

waiting out the drunken rages - pretending we didn't

hear the ashtrays crashing - singing to silence the screams

of glass cutting a mother's delicate flesh...

Who will know these ancient scars, except you and me?

Even the streets, the human replacements

could not silence you playing, how you once lulled me to sleep.

Scofield uses the medicine wheel to represent the different aspects of his journey of self-discovery - west for arrival, north for searching, east for dreams, and south for healing.

"South symbolizes innocence and trust - spring and renewal," Scofield said.

While many of Scofields' poems are grim little pieces of a desperate world, the collection ends on a high note of spiritual renewal and acceptance. The Gathering - Stones For The Medicine Wheel is a sometimes difficult but worthwhile read.