—“Why the Deer Spirit” from ***The Dialogues: The Song of Francis Pegahmagabow*** by Armand Garnet Ruffo. Published by Wolsak and Wynn © 2024 by Armand Garnet Ruffo.

More about The Dialogues: The Song of Francis Pegahmagabow:

In The Dialogues: The Song of Francis Pegahmagabow, award-winning author Armand Garnet Ruffo brings to life not only the story of the famed WWI Indigenous sniper, but also the complexities of telling Indigenous stories. From Wasauksing (Parry Island) to the trenches of WWI to the stage, Ruffo moves seamlessly through time in these poems, taking the reader on a captivating journey through Pegahmagabow’s story and onto the creation of Sounding Thunder, the opera based on his life. Throughout, Ruffo uses the Ojibwe concept of two-eyed seeing, which combines the strengths of western and Indigenous ways of knowing, and invites the reader to do the same, particularly through the inclusion of the Anishinaabemowin language within the collection. These are poems that challenge western conventions of thinking, that celebrate hope and that show us a new way to see the world.

Armand Garnet Ruffo. Photo credit: Bernard Clark.

More about Armand Garnet Ruffo:

Armand Garnet Ruffo was born in Chapleau, northern Ontario, and is a band member of the Chapleau (Fox Lake) Cree First Nation. A recipient of an Honorary Life Membership Award from the League of Canadian Poets, he is recognized as a major contributor to both contemporary Indigenous literature and Indigenous literary scholarship in Canada. His publications include Norval Morrisseau: Man Changing Into Thunderbird (2014) and Treaty # (2019), both finalists for Governor General’s Literary Awards. In 2020, he was awarded the Latner Writers’ Trust Poetry Prize in recognition of his work. Ruffo teaches at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario.