The Salmon ShantiesHarold RhenischLabel: University of Regina PressDescription: Harold Rhenisch’s poems balance the settler and Indigenous experiences of land and water in the Pacific NorthwestA collection of shanties (songs) laid out in couplets that move between English and Chinook Wawa The Salmon Shanties celebrates a poetic tradition deeply rooted on the West Coast. Harold Rhenisch explores memories of people place and of returning home speaking the land’s names as a music of its own and creating a series of aural maps.Imbued with rhythms of Secwepemc grass dances the colloquial chatter of the Canadian poet Al Purdy and the voice of poet and historian Charles Lillard Rhenisch’s work sings of roots to the land lifted up by the sea into the sky—as if Ezra Pound had sung of Cascadia instead of Europe.Do not be in Mareuil and Périgeux tonight; it is 1912 no longer.We the land’s singers are walking the star road on the long way homewith the crickets of a July evening above Tuc el Nuitthe burrowing owls of N’kmpand the long memories of the dwarf shrews of Nighthawk.Breath cannot be denied. Poh cannot be forsaken. Ezra shantie./p.
