CANR

• Old Gods ( poetry collection) Nightwood Editions (Gibsons, British Columbia, Canada), 2023
• Prairie Edge ( novel) University of Minnesota Press (Minneapolis, MN), 2024

1. Prairie edge : a novel LCCN 2024006960 Type of material Book Personal name Kerr, Conor, author. Main title Prairie edge : a novel / Conor Kerr. Edition First University of Minnesota Press edition. Published/Produced Minneapolis : University of Minnesota Press, 2024. Projected pub date 2406 Description 1 online resource ISBN 9781452971285 (ebook) (hardcover ; acid-free paper) (paperback ; acid-free paper) Item not available at the Library. Why not? 2. Old gods LCCN 2023525608 Type of material Book Personal name Kerr, Conor, author. Main title Old gods / Conor Kerr. Published/Produced Gibsons, BC, Canada : Nightwood Editions, 2023. ©2023 Description 93 pages : portrait ; 21 cm ISBN 9780889714465 (softcover) 0889714460 (softcover) CALL NUMBER PR9199.4.K468 O43 2023 Copy 1 Request in Jefferson or Adams Building Reading Rooms

• Wikipedia -

  Conor Kerr

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  Conor Kerr is a Canadian writer from Edmonton, Alberta.[1] His debut novel Avenue of Champions, published in 2021, was the winner of the ReLit Award for Fiction in 2022,[2] and was shortlisted for the 2022 Amazon.ca First Novel Award[3] and longlisted for the 2022 Giller Prize.[4]

  Of Métis and Ukrainian background, Kerr currently lives in Vancouver, British Columbia.[2] Named for the ceremonial name of 118 Avenue in Edmonton as the "Avenue of Champions" due to the location of the Northlands Coliseum, the novel focuses on the coming of age of a young Métis man.[5]

  Kerr has also published the poetry collection An Explosion of Feathers.[5] In 2019 he was the winner of The Fiddlehead's Ralph Gustafson Poetry Prize, and in 2021 he was the winner of the Malahat Review's Long Poem Prize.[2]

• From Publisher -

  Conor Kerr is a Métis Ukrainian writer. A member of the Métis Nation of Alberta, he is a descendant of the Lac Ste. Anne Métis and the Papaschase Cree Nation. His Ukrainian family are settlers in Treaty Four and Six territories in Saskatchewan. In 2020 he received The Fiddlehead's Ralph Gustafson Poetry Prize and in 2021 was awarded The Malahat Review's Long Poem Prize. His work has been anthologized in Best Canadian Poetry 2020 and Best Canadian Stories 2020 and published in literary magazines across Canada. He is the author of the poetry collection An Explosion of Feathers and the novel Avenue of Champions, which was shortlisted for the Amazon First Novel Award, won a 2022 ReLit Award and was longlisted for the 2022 Scotiabank Giller Prize. And his poetry collection Old Gods is a finalist for the 2023 Governor General's Literary Award.

• Conor Kerr website - https://www.conorkerr.ca/

  Conor is a national award winning (and losing) Metis/Ukrainian writer and bird hunter living in amiskwaciwâskahikan (Edmonton). Born in Saskatoon, raised in Buffalo Pound Lake and Drayton Valley. He is a member of the Metis Nation of Alberta. His Ukrainian family are Settlers on Treaty 4 Territory.

  Conor is the author of the novels Avenue of Champions (2021), Prairie Edge (2024) and the poetry collections An Explosion of Feathers (2021) and Old Gods (2023).

  Conor’s debut novel, Avenue of Champions, won the 2022 RELIT Award, was shortlisted for the 2022 Amazon/Walrus Debut Novel Award and longlisted for the 2022 Giller Prize.

  Old Gods was shortlisted for the 2023 Governor General’s Award for Poetry and named one of CBC’s Best Books of 2023.

  Conor is passionate about crafting narratives that focus on the relationship to the landscapes around us.

  Comfortable with all genres Conor’s writing has been featured in The Fiddlehead, Prairie Fire, The Malahat Review, Grain, THIS Magazine, The Yellowhead Institute, and other literary magazines. His work has been anthologized in Best Canadian Stories 2020, and Best Canadian Poetry 2020. In 2019 Conor received The Fiddlehead’s Ralph Gustafson Poetry Prize and in 2021 he received The Malahat Review’s Long Poem Prize.

• SAD - https://www.sadmag.ca/blog/2023/7/7/conor-kerr-reflects-on-prayerie-possibilities

  CONOR KERR REFLECTS ON PRAYERIE POSSIBILITIES
  Kayla MacInnis
  Two coyotes romp in front of a McDonald's at night. The McDonald's drive-thru sign in red and yellow is the only colour and light. The McDonald's sign reads "BIG COYOT3 THAT ONE"
  ILLUSTRATION BY SYD DANGER, INSPIRED BY KERR’S POEM “BIG COYOTE, THAT ONE”: “WE PASSED A MCDONALD’S, AND TWO COYOTES TRAILED OFF TO SCOUR THE DROPPED DRIVE-THRU FRENCH FRIES, AND I ADMIT THAT I WANTED TO JOIN THEM.”

  CONOR KERR REFLECTS ON PRAYERIE POSSIBILITIES

  A conversation on his latest book of poems, Old Gods, prairie life, and the future to come.

  by Kayla MacInnis

  “Mobility,” according to Métis Ukrainian author Conor Kerr, “is pretty ingrained within a Métis worldview.” Kerr’s latest book of poems, Old Gods, moves between departure and arrival, settling into the necessary intersections between. From one poem to the next, one city to the next, the Red River carts’ wheels heave forward, carrying questions across the changing landscape of both the prairies and cityscapes in which Kerr travels.

  Each poem's purpose is to galvanize, to transform, to watch the personal/communal/historical narrative of Kerr unravel along the cascading roads ahead. There is a restlessness one senses within the constant motion of Métis identity, but home doesn’t necessarily need to be monolithic, it can be an open road, and it can be moving in seasons, following weather patterns and the routes the bison once travelled.

  Kerr’s words are tender, inciting, and resolving, yet there is a grit to his presence on the page that finds itself in checking traplines and the intersecting space between urban and bush Indigenity. As we read on, we witness him uncover language and dismantle the academic mindset through writing against the colonial rules of grammar and spelling.

  Crossing the city limit boundaries, Kerr explores the peripheries of the past in candid ruminations that yield rich visualizations of the old trade routes beneath the current highways. Prayerie poverty is juxtaposed with the richness of the land and mouthwatering descriptions of bison pemmican, Saskatoon berries, and moose meat delivered to kin. “Prayerie” is how Kerr describes the plains in his poem “Just Passing Through,” "A couple Métis born into prayerie poverty," he writes. His audience is the early morning birds, his Indigenous kin, and those who seek to understand.

  I met with Conor Kerr at Platform 7, a coffeehouse resembling a train station, in East Vancouver on an early June afternoon. On the garden patio, under an umbrella, with the crows cawing in the background, we discussed his time on the road, Métis identity, demolition and world-building, temporality, hope, and “those yet to come.”

  I first read your poetry in Issue 215 of The Malahat Review, in which you were one of the 2021 Long Poem Prize winners for your poem “Just Passing Through”—which I adored, by the way. Being Métis myself, I saw and felt what it means to be Métis in your words. Coming from Road Allowance communities and constantly experiencing relocations, migrations, and dispossession, but also being deeply tied to the land. Could you share a bit about your experience with that poem?

  Yeah, that one is kind of interesting because Saskatchewan is definitely home territory, but my Métis family and communities were much more from amiskwacîwâskahikan, Edmonton area. It's where my grandmother's roots come from and their connection with the Métis community and the Papaschase Cree Nation in that area. But when the reserve was illegally surrendered and taken over back in 1888, they ended up in the north of St. Paul de Métis in the bush.

  There are a few different First Nations up there, like Saddle Lake, Good Fish, Frog Lake, and what would eventually become Métis settlements. They weren't settlements yet, but they were in the process of becoming Kikino and Buffalo Lake. My grandma was in a community that was in the middle of all of that as well. It wasn’t the traditional land, but it was land they had also been forced to move to, and I found that to be such an interesting thing, to be displaced from your home territories while still in your home territory. And to not still have that same connection to space and knowing that the landscapes around you have that relationship with you. But you might feel dislocated just because of the colonial imposition pushing you out of those areas and not letting you actually connect in a meaningful and heartfelt way, the way that we would have traditionally. Some people still have the opportunity to connect like that contemporarily, but a lot of us don't. I feel very fortunate because I grew up with grandparents who were very connected back to the community and the lands, and even though we lived in Southern Saskatchewan when I was a kid—because they worked on the army base in Moose Jaw—even that landscape around there became home for them. It was like their own version of an earlier Métis hunting brigade.

  In an interview with the Malahat Review about this poem, I read that you asked yourself, “What defines a prairie life?” That question is burning in my mind. Do you have that answer now, or is it ever-evolving? As someone born in the prairies but grew up displaced from them, I often ask myself this question, but I am curious to hear what it is like for someone who has spent as much time on that land as you have.

  That question is burning in everyone's mind from the prairies. That's just one of these things, especially coming from this space in an area where everybody else constantly tells you their area is better. Oh, have you ever seen the mountains? Cool, man. What are you gonna do? Walk up one? Yeah. Vancouver is a nice beautiful space. It has a great backdrop, but there's an edge in the prairies. There's an edge that comes with growing up there and being there.

  People are constantly denigrating the work happening in the prairies, even though all the major award winners for the last while in Canadian literature are coming out of Edmonton and Saskatoon. We need to bring in more voices. There is so much of the same story being told. A rising voice is coming from these areas in this space that we haven't seen. It's also a space where you can create, and you can do it sustainably right now. Many people I know, myself included, are all moving back. Here, you're so focused on struggling to survive.

  A lot of people are trying to capture the beauty of the prairies in their work, too. I was in Edmonton on Monday morning, and this thunderstorm was brewing, and the sound of that was so beautiful. I miss that. It's ever-evolving, yeah. I don't think there's any definition behind it. There's a bit more of that culture around it. And actually, when I was in Kenya a couple of months ago, it was kind of funny because I found the landscape in Nairobi very similar to prairie land. It stretches out. Similar hues. The dirt, though, was this beautiful orange-red. That was different. And, of course, the animals are different, but there were magpies everywhere, just like in Edmonton.

  Your writing is often placed in a relationship with the landscapes surrounding you, calling the prairies “an unfolding promise.” The road is a common theme within Old Gods. I mentioned this a bit in an earlier question, but you do an amazing job at embedding the movement of being Métis into your telling. Not many people understand how much colonization has impacted the Métis.

  The idea of permanently settling in one place within a home for your entire life is almost very colonial. You know, this is my owned land and my own spot and blah, blah, blah. I'll never move, and I'll never leave. For the Métis community I'm from, and even with my grandparents and family, everyone moved all the time. We were moving for different opportunities, just like our ancestors did. But always within this landscape that we knew. It wasn't that we were necessarily trying new things or anything like that—it was still within the connection of these areas.

  I almost think of the roads like the veins within the prairie. Now there are these highways, but back in the day, the highways were still built on what were old trading routes, the old routes that our ancestors traversed and travelled for generations untold until they eventually just became actual highways in the Canadian prairie context. They're very much like veins, just like the waterways too, you know? These intersecting veins carry the blood of our own mobility and being able to navigate within these areas. I like to think of the road almost as that metaphor for just carrying along in these veins. But also, home can be that, you know? I love the constant mobility that my lifestyle affords me, and not the idea of permanence and settling down somewhere.

  I also feel like, for me as a Métis person, there's this innate sense that I have to be moving all the time. It's almost embedded into my being.

  Even right now, I'm in the process of moving back to Edmonton from Vancouver. I have to go to the island to drop my dogs off with my parents tonight; I'm going to Quebec City on Sunday for a conference. I like going, travelling, moving, and doing those kinds of things. Even at home or in space, I'm still constantly leaving to go camping or out because I feel that mobility is pretty ingrained within a Métis worldview.

  You play a lot with temporality in this collection, moving from past to present to future. I think a lot about time, especially concerning colonial systems and being a people of the land. We experience time in a different way, following time as we did with seasonal migrations, where our people have learned to move and adapt. Can you share some of your experience with revisiting the past, looking toward the future, and navigating the now?

  Whenever I play around with that—I always think that I don't know anything along these lines, of course—but the idea that our current timeframe and worldview is very based around Western disciplines and Christian disciplines and this idea of the past-present-future we’re in. I almost think of it as this animalistic sense where you're constantly always living in this present that's being informed by both future and past, but not this almost historical thing. We're looking and existing within these different timeframes all at the same moment. It's not necessarily linear. It's way more circular, which I know is the ultimate Indigenous cop-out. But it's true, at the same time.

  Being constantly informed by the idea of the future, which we don't really think about enough. I've worked a lot of Western jobs in the course of my career and have thought about how people will talk about planning ahead, but they're really only planning for a generation ahead. Where when I chat with Indigenous people—and this is especially true when I was managing Indigenous student centers like the one in NorQuest, the community college there—I would be chatting with the 20- or 21-year-old Cree and Métis women who were talking about how the work that they're putting in right now, it's informing not just their kids, but their kids, and their grandkids, thinking about those seven generations from where we are. Thinking about these things as people from a long line of history where people have tried to be removed, replaced, and revised constantly, there's also this reclamation and ownership of the past within our worldview too. So, trying to build that in, so we can tell our own story about what the past truly is.

  A lot of your work highlights your relationship with hunting. In the Hungry Zine, your poem, “A Can of Mushroom Soup,” feels like an ode to growing up a certain way. In “The God of Willow and Muskeg,” you speak of food as one would community. The two have always been intertangled. Your descriptions of food are very sensory, textural, and visual. Being a hunter/trapper/harvester, providing food/medicine/berries for yourself and your loved ones. You can sense your respect for the animals and how it necessitates survival. Could you touch on this?

  I fucking hate mushroom soup with a passion. I refuse to eat it. I will eat anything except mushrooms. It's primarily because of the soup but also because my Noohkoom poisoned me regularly with mushrooms. She knew what to pick in Edmonton, but she would do it in the middle of the city, where many had absorbable pesticides and fungicides. I'm surprised my cousins, and I didn't die from that.

  I was at my dad's 66th birthday, and he wanted to cook a whole bunch of wild birds in different forms. So the Sharp-tailed grouse—which is basically prairie chicken—my granny wanted to do it the "classic way." Which is also bad cooking, where it's so overcooked. They could be better cooks because the food is terrible and always has been, no matter what. They'd use the cans of mushroom soup and boil and cook the hell out of it. It's just not good. But that's what we grew up eating, and I hate it. Just the thought of that taste is so evocative in my head that I had to write that Hungry Zine piece. But that world is actually kind of one of the reasons I'm moving back. Being here, this is not my home territory by a long shot.

  I loved the imagery of you using recipes for fancy meals and putting in the stuff you caught.

  That was a pandemic development in my own life. I was trying to become a better cook. One of the things I'm excited about with my return to Edmonton is hunting and harvesting. I'm very fortunate that I grew up knowing how to hunt and harvest, which not many people would have the ability to do, mostly from my grandparents and dad. Nowadays, it's not something that's often passed down because it's such a generational loss—and many people are moving to urban cities to try and make it.

  I loved reading about that in “The God of Willow and Muskeg.”

  It was funny, though. Because in Edmonton, zucchini grows incredibly well, so everyone always has tons of zucchini, they want to get rid of. You never ask for anything in exchange, but it's just a prairie NDN culture that you need to give something back. So, whenever I was pulling up to a friends’ place, I could see them sitting on the front stoops of their houses with a mountain of zucchini beside them. I had so much that I would have to grate it up and add it to things.

  I keep thinking about all the foods from my childhood; the wild game doesn't have to be that bad. You can cook it incredibly well. Harvest it well so the animal doesn't suffer and the meat is good, and then process it right. My brother and I were making all these incredible Italian-style sausages. We got really into these fancy recipe books and replaced beef or pork with moose or goose or duck or whatever we had.

  We'd take the moose tongue, which is not a food that many people outside of the elders would find desirable. We cooked them in a broth we made with juniper berries and stock, which was good. Surprisingly good.

  I sense a theme of demolition in your poems. “Wintersongs” touches on “dismantling the structures,” and in “What Do You Believe In?” you speak of the children of the future giving Canada “away to the grass.” There is this common sense with healing that we have to look back to move forward. And for you, it seems like looking back means going to a place where the wrong path was walked and choosing a better way, a different way.

  It's that resurgence concept. That last poem, "What Do You Believe In?", I wrote that one for The Mamawi Project. They were putting together a Métis collective zine. That poem has got a lot of references in it. It's got Louis Riel. Pieces of the Seven Fires prophecy, the people will be reborn, like the artists. There are a lot of these really old historical Métis references hidden within there. I very intentionally did that. I'm not usually that intentional about writing, but I was very intentional about that one in particular.

  It’s still in the system.

  Yeah, exactly. These class structures are still embedded in place, which created a lot of the shit, unfortunately. At the same time, you get the beauty of the resurgence of language and the resurgence of all these other traditional and contemporary concepts. I think we often talk about this in Canada: What would decolonization actually look like? It may not go well. The provincial organizational structures are terrible, and all the bureaucratic bullshit that comes with that. It's also, obviously, a hypothetical. But I do still love the idea of a return to—not a traditional way, because I think that's such a weird, outdated, stereotypical concept, where we're going to go back to existing as we did back then. But it's like, no, no, no. Indigenous peoples of every culture have always adapted and innovated. I've always adapted. I have always brought future in. And that's just such a racist, old Canadian way of thinking, where you lived in antiquity and never wanted to see change. I liked the idea of what it could potentially look like, within these futurism ideas, of returning to governance.

  Your poem “What Do You Believe In?” reads as someone with endless hope, and in “The North Sask,” you write, “fill the water with seeds,” which feels like a very visual telling of hope. Tell me about hope. Why is it important?

  There are these odd areas in Saskatchewan that are few and far between. The ones that have been allowed to return to prairie grass and what it looked like before, and it is exceptionally beautiful there. Similar to Wanuskewin and Grasslands National Park down south. Some of these weird areas where whoever owned it decided it wasn't good enough for farming anymore, and they just gave up on it, and it returned to natural grasses, and it's so incredibly beautiful. When you're driving by those fucking mono-crop areas with lentils or canola in southern Saskatchewan, you realize that's why the landscape looks so beat up—it was destroyed by modern agriculture, and it's destroying its habitat. But these areas, it's almost like in Game of Thrones, that sea of grasses that the Dothraki ride over. They are these beautiful grass structures. I think it is so cool to see that land return to more of a natural composition and natural state.

  My next book, Prairie Edge, touches on this kind of. There is this one Métis activist that is running the show, and she kind of gets disillusioned by the current protest culture. So she decides to do one last big kind of movement and steals a whole bunch of bison from Elk Island National Park and releases them in the middle of downtown Edmonton.

  I think when I write about a lot of settler colonialism, like in the prairies, in particular—and, I mean, even on the West Coast out here—it's such a minimal time speck regarding the world around us. It's only been 150 years since it has not been under the governance of Cree and Métis matriarchs. It's such a small thing. I was trying to capture that in some of my poems. This is just such a small blip. Everything ends. It's a natural cycle. But at some point, it will return to a different form, whatever that is. This isn't forever in any sense. This is just a small cycle. We can see a change in all of these current global situations. It's not forever, and there will be an end, and that's alright, and we'll see what that return looks like after that. The future will be alright. Hopefully.

  Conor Kerr is a Métis/Ukrainian writer and educator living in amiskwaciwâskahikan. Born in Saskatoon and raised in Buffalo Pound Lake and Drayton Valley. Conor is descended from the Lac Ste. Anne Métis community by way of the Red River Settlement and the Papaschase Cree Nation. He is a member of the Métis Nation of Alberta and has been a recognized harvester for years. His Ukrainian family are Settlers in Treaty 4 Territory.

  Kayla MacInnis is a multidisciplinary Métis/European storyteller from Misâskwatômina (Saskatoon) residing on Coast Salish territory. Through sharing stories that mix visual arts and the written word, Kayla hopes to inspire people to find different ways to connect with themselves and one another. Follow her on Instagram or visit her website to learn more.

• CBC - https://www.cbc.ca/radio/thenextchapter/how-an-escaped-albertan-bison-herd-inspired-conor-kerr-s-latest-novel-about-resisting-colonial-structures-1.7178861

  How an escaped Albertan bison herd inspired Conor Kerr's latest novel about resisting colonial structures
  The Métis-Ukrainian writer spoke to The Next Chapter’s Ali Hassan about his novel, Prairie Edge
  CBC Books · Posted: Apr 19, 2024 4:40 PM EDT | Last Updated: April 19
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  A book cover featuring a bison on a yellow background next to a black and white photo of a bearded man in sunglasses and a cowboy hat.
  Prairie Edge is a novel by Conor Kerr. (Strange Light, Jordon Hon)

  The Next Chapter18:53
  Bison roam Downtown Edmonton in Prairie Edge
  Métis-Ukrainian author Conor Kerr's latest novel takes inspiration from a real-life news story. In Prairie Edge, two distant Métis cousins release bison into Edmonton's urban green spaces in an act of reclamation.
  The idea for Conor Kerr's latest novel spurred from the story of a herd of bison that broke free from a farm and ventured through the Albertan city of Camrose in 2010. In Prairie Edge, two Métis cousins seek to reclaim Indigenous knowledge in part, through the bison and their historic ties to the land.

  Isidore "Ezzy" Desjarlais and Grey Ginther live together in Grey's uncle's trailer, passing their time with cribbage and cheap beer. Grey is cynical of what she feels is a lazy and performative activist culture, while Grey is simply devoted to his distant cousin. So when Grey concocts a scheme to set a herd of bison loose in downtown Edmonton, Ezzy is along for the ride — one that has devastating, fatal consequences.

  The CBC Poetry Prize is open from April 1 to June 1

  Kerr is a Métis/Ukrainian writer who hails from many prairie towns and cities, including Saskatoon. He now lives in Edmonton. A 2022 CBC Books writer to watch, his previous works include the novels Old Gods and Avenue of Champions, which was longlisted for the 2022 Scotiabank Giller Prize, and won the ReLit award the same year. Kerr currently teaches creative writing at the University of Alberta.

  Kerr spoke with The Next Chapter's Ali Hassan about how Indigenous and non-Indigenous people learn more about the land they live on.

  You open with a prologue and it's the late 1870s during the Métis bison hunt. Take me back to that moment and describe how significant that hunt was for the Métis in that time.

  I've heard some stories from some elders who had direct family members who were participants on some of these last hunts where Métis hunting parties would leave on these hunting expeditions where they'd join in with other communities along the way and they'd follow the bison herd south. One of the ways that I thought about the idea of the Prairie edge was with this creation known as the Medicine Line, the American and Canadian border, and how back in the day you could free flow across all of that and then with the inception of the American Calvary's push against the Sioux in the West as well as more North-West Mounted Police coming in on the Canadian side, this line became more pronounced and you weren't able to necessarily cross this. As the bison herds dwindled, I thought, what a depressing idea that as this group of Métis are following this bison herd south, the elders know that they'll never see the bison again?

  By the first chapter, you've jumped to contemporary time and you introduce us to these two Métis characters who propelled the story forward, Ezzy Desjarlais and Grey Ginther. Ezzy in particular, he grew up in the city in foster care, hasn't graduated high school, steals to get by and done a short stint in prison for minor offences. Why did you give Ezzy that lived experience?

  I think that's a pretty common experience for a lot of young Métis men who have gone in and out of basically systems their entire life, these colonial systems, whether it's the child welfare system which essentially then becomes a pathway into the prison system. People who are like Ezzy in particular, who's not a bad guy but he's been placed into this world where he's essentially been told that he's less than constantly within this space and that he's waiting to try to figure out what is going on. He doesn't know how to really take that initiative himself, he's never been granted that type of confidence – he's essentially just hanging out and seeing what life brings him.

  For Grey, who's charging ahead with this plan to release the bison into the streets, what do the bison symbolize to her?

  The bison are a return to a different governance structure, they're a return to the idea of – there's also kind of a joke in there around this "#BisonBack", but really what I'm writing in is the idea that we talk about in Indigenous community around LandBack. Our idea of a concept of LandBack from my understanding is a return to a governance structure that institutes Indigenous knowledge and the matriarchal and two-spirit ways of knowing and running a space. So when you have bison return to a landscape, especially in urban space like Edmonton, there's a return back to an Indigenous governance structure and a lifestyle in a society that we necessarily haven't seen yet. For Grey, this is actual LandBack in action by the restoration of bison in the spaces that they would have historically always been in.

  This is actual LandBack in action by the restoration of bison in the spaces that they would have historically always been in.
  - Conor Kerr
  What did Ezzy, who's a descendant of the Papaschase Cree, learn about his ancestors and their story at this rally?

  Yeah, I feel there's a lot of that context and talking in Edmonton, especially as someone like myself. My great, great grandmother was born on the Papaschase Cree nation and then had to leave to the Bush north of Saint Paul, Alberta after. Then they came in and burned down all the homesteads and got everyone out of there. There's a constant growing up and learning about this knowledge because you don't hear about this still. It's still a very under-talked about thing and even in Edmonton itself where there's a bit of talk about it but really like the vast majority of people have no concept that the majority of the south side of Edmonton was a First Nations community after the treaty negotiations and of course before it was always the First Nations community... I feel like a lot of people grow up in these spaces, whether they're Indigenous or non-Indigenous and don't have knowledge of the land and what really exists here.

  I feel like a lot of people grow up in these spaces, whether they're Indigenous or non-Indigenous and don't have knowledge of the land and what really exists here.
  - Conor Kerr
  Ezzy ends up in rehab, he befriends an elder there who teaches him Métis beading, shares stories about Ezzy's family and grandfather. How do these cultural knowledge and traditional practices contribute specifically here to the characters journey of self discovery and and healing?

  There's kind of an interesting component behind a lot of this because for a lot of Indigenous people the only place that you can actually learn about some of your own culture and history and knowledge is in Western institutions, whether that's rehab, whether that's jail, whether that's post-secondary. There's just way more access within these Western institutions than for a guy like Ezzy who's just growing up all throughout these kinds of spaces and the access that he gets to learning more about his culture and knowledge is framed within these Western contexts.

  I was thinking about how much activism and the forms of protests that are in Prairie Edge. How effective are they in creating lasting change?

  The idea behind a lot of this is really that sense of a collective movement whereas people are taking up more of these ideas around like LandBack, working together to make a significant change, to show how we can actually press against policy, to press against the government-imposed restrictions and those kinds of things. Honestly, if you think about where Indigenous relations and this work was 30 years ago comparatively to today, it's changed a lot. But at the same time, I remember an elder telling me one time that if we're waiting for the government to make change for us, if we're waiting for Western institutions to make change for us, that we're going to be waiting forever.

  If we're waiting for Western institutions to make change for us, that we're going to be waiting forever.
  - Conor Kerr
  That's not going to happen, real change isn't going to come from the University of Alberta or the government of Alberta, the Canadian government. It's going to come from within community. It's going to come from future generations of youth who know themselves, who know what it means to be Indigenous, to embrace that and there's so much hope for that future, but there's a lot of work that's been said in the groundwork behind this from generations and generations of matriarchs, of two-spirit peoples, of men who fought constantly for a future for us, for me to be able to talk to you today around all this.

  This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

• CBC - https://www.cbc.ca/books/edmonton-author-conor-kerr-on-what-it-s-like-to-have-your-debut-novel-longlisted-for-the-giller-prize-1.6588740

  Edmonton author Conor Kerr on what it's like to have your debut novel longlisted for the Giller Prize
  Avenue of Champions is longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize
  CBC Books · Posted: Sep 21, 2022 3:12 PM EDT | Last Updated: September 21, 2022

  Conor Kerr is an educator, writer and harvester living in Vancouver. (Zachary Ayotte)
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  Conor Kerr is a Métis and Ukrainian educator, writer and harvester. He is a member of the Métis Nation of Alberta and is descended from the Gladue, Ginther and Quinn families from the Lac Ste. Anne and Fort Des Prairies Métis communities and the Papaschase Cree Nation. His poem Prairie Ritual was on the 2021 CBC Poetry Prize longlist.

  The CBC Books spring reading list: 50 great books to read this season

  Kerr's debut novel, Avenue of Champions, considers Indigenous youth in relation to the urban constructs and colonial spaces in which they survive — from violence, whitewashing, trauma and racism to language revitalization, relationships with Elders and re-staking land claims. It won the 2022 ReLit Award in the novel category and was a finalist for the 2022 Amazon Canada First Novel Award.

  Avenue of Champions is one of the 14 books longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize. The $100,000 award annually recognizes the best in Canadian fiction.

  The 2022 shortlist will be announced on Sept. 27, 2022 and the winner will be announced on Nov. 7, 2022.

  Shortly after receiving the nomination, Kerr spoke to CBC's Mark Connolly on Edmonton AM about having his book longlisted for the biggest award in Canadian literature.

  What went through your mind when you found out Avenue of Champions was longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize?

  It's funny and this will sound unbelievable but, two nights ago I had a dream that it somehow was on the longlist for the Giller. Of course, everyone's thinking about it and it's in the back of your mind. You pretend you don't care if you're a writer, but you really do care and you really think about these kind of things.

  You pretend you don't care if you're a writer, but you really do care and you really think about these kind of things.
  I was actually camping at Miquelon Lake and tuned into the live broadcast. It was a very emotional experience. People work toward something like that their entire life. It's pretty exciting that what emerged from a short story from Marilyn Dumont's creative writing course at the University of Alberta became this.

  Avenue of Champions is your debut novel. What does it mean for your career to be recognized in this way?

  It's hard to know. Fortunately, I have another novel ready to go, that will be coming out in the spring of 2024. It's called Prairie Edge. This will help build up the hype for me. It's centred around Edmonton and people releasing bison in the middle of the city.

  The CBC Books Writers to Watch list: 30 Canadian writers on the rise in 2022
  What is Avenue of Champions about?

  The book centres around the 118th Avenue community and my time going up there and living there in what would be the 2000s. It talks about that Métis experience in an urban landscape and what that looks like for people who've been disassociated from the land they historically called their homelands for generations and generations.

  It talks about that Métis experience in an urban landscape, and what that looks like for people who've been disassociated from the land they historically called their homelands for generations and generations.
  It also takes into account a lot of the the stories of the dissolution and the illegal surrender of Papaschase First Nation and the descendants of that. They're spreading out throughout the city afterwards and into the rural countryside and going through generations of a family and what their experiences are in the colonial society.

  Why was that a story that you wanted to tell?

  There's always been an image in my head of my grandmother's grandmother, who was born on the Papaschase First Nation and lived there until she was about 12 years old, when she ended up in the Métis road allowances north of St. Paul. Then she came back to Edmonton as an older lady in the 1950s.

  What would that place have looked like to someone who, when she left in the 1880s, Edmonton wasn't anything, really, that time? It was a forest, it was a couple of houses — and when she came back it was a booming urban centre.

  That's been an image that stuck with me, and it was something I wanted to explore.

  LISTEN | Conor Kerr discusses Avenue of Champions:

  Are you confident that this kind of exposure will give it, give the novel a boost?

  It's been doing weirdly well. To be quite honest, I'm pretty surprised about it all. It won the ReLit Award, which is for novels published by independent presses. Then it was shortlisted for the Amazon Canada First Novel Award. Then to be on this longlist!

  It's been exceeding all expectations, I think from from everyone, including myself. That's for sure.

  This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

• My Entertainment World - https://www.myentertainmentworld.ca/2022/11/conor-kerr/

  Author Spotlight Series: Conor Kerr
  The Author Spotlight Series shines a light on writers creating heartfelt and original work across genres, giving them an opportunity to talk about their books and why they do what they do.

  Click Here to follow the series as it progresses.

  To submit an author for consideration, email editors@myentertainmentworld.ca.

  …

  “Conor Kerr is a Métis Ukrainian writer. A member of the Métis Nation of Alberta, he is a descendant of the Lac Ste. Anne Métis and the Papaschase Cree Nation. His Ukrainian family are settlers in Treaty Four and Six territories in Saskatchewan. In 2020 he received The Fiddlehead‘s Ralph Gustafson Poetry Prize and in 2021 was awarded The Malahat Review‘s Long Poem Prize. His work has been anthologized in Best Canadian Poetry 2020 and Best Canadian Stories 2020 and published in literary magazines across Canada. He is the author of the poetry collection An Explosion of Feathers and the novel Avenue of Champions, which was shortlisted for the Amazon First Novel Award and won a 2022 ReLit Award. His poetry collection Old Gods is forthcoming with Nightwood Editions in 2023″.

  When did you know you wanted to be a writer?
  I’ve been writing since I can remember. I used to get all my Lego men together, and I’d write stories that detailed out there movements and the world that they occupied and lived in. These stories were complete with heroes and villains and quests, all the good things that a five/six-year-old wants to create within a world. I’ve continued that practice for most of my life barring a few years in my early twenties when I focused on my “career.” But it’s always been in the back of my head that this is something that I’m going to do. No one in my life is surprised about the books that are out and coming out. I get messages from friends from high school/university who congratulate me and refer back to conversations we had when we were young and drunk and the world still seemed bright and I told them that my dream life was to be a writer. Now it’s happening in a big way.

  Do you remember the first thing you ever wrote?
  Those same Lego stories. To be fair, I don’t remember them but my Grandma kept them and I recently revisited them. The one is like fifty pages long and really not that bad. I’ve read worse stories in MFA workshops. I do remember being accused of plagiarism when I was nine or ten and a teacher at my elementary school just lost her mind on me. I had written down an old Metis story that my Grandma had told me. She thought I stole it and instead of being a good educator and asking questions, she told me that I should never write again (this shit is common with white teachers approaching Indigenous kids). That didn’t stop me from continuing to write though. I carry a lot of anger with me so I hope that she quit teaching soon after that so she didn’t ruin any other kids lives. Loser.

  How did you develop your skills?
  I’ve always had a bit of a knack for voice, but things really came together for me in my mid-twenties when I went back to University to upgrade courses to apply for the Master of Fine Arts, Creative Writing program at the University of British Columbia. The biggest thing that came out of this time period was a focus on discipline and daily practice. Before that, I’d call myself a writer, but I’d maybe crank out a half-assed poem or short story every year. Not a sustained product and not sustained enough to start really developing a unique voice, practice, and an ability to work within words. The workshops in the MFA practice were hit and miss but the necessity to have a daily writing practice really stuck with me and continues to do so to this day. It’s so easy to just say, “ahh I’ll write it tomorow.”

  Who are some of your biggest literary influences? Do you have a favourite book/author?
  When I was younger I leaned towards the work that we read in our English Lit courses at the University of Alberta. AKA All The Old White Dead Men, Hemingway, Steinbeck, Cohen, Harrison, Carver, etc., and on and on and on. Some of them are better than others. Some of them have aged better than others too. This was what was presented to me and I ate that shit up. As I got older and realized that the world, and especially my world as a Metis person isn’t necessarily defined by the thought process of these men who have had literally everything handed to them I switched it up and started reading more Indigenous writers. The first person who blew my mind was Thomas King. I couldn’t believe that someone could write books in the same voice that my friends and family talked in. Then others such as Katherine Vermette, Cherie Dimaline, Heather O’Neill, Norma Dunning, Colson Whitehead, Billy-Ray Belcourt, jaye simpson, Jas Morgan, showed me that voice and story can be so much more than what is talked about in a 200/300 level University class.

  How would you describe your work?
  Amazing….. Nah I’m a big fan of the write the exact way you would tell a story to your friend at a party or the bar and then edit it up later. So I tend to have a bit of a ridiculous voice. I usually don’t describe narrative details that often and instead let the characters actions/dialogue do that for them. I try to write humor, I make bad jokes, I tell stories that actually happen. But I try and build in a bit of that magic that lives within a Metis worldview as well. So that people can get drawn in by a gritty inner city world in northern Alberta and then see the love that community has even with colonial violence being smashed into the characters on a regular basis.

  What’s your writing process like?
  I wrote my first novel Avenue of Champions over the course of a couple years during my MFA. The novel is just my thesis with a couple edits. What I tend to do now though is hop into the bath. I got this great tray that goes over the bathtub and I have a shitty iPad that I don’t care if it hits the water at some point. Hasn’t yet. I tend to try and get anywhere from 1500-2000 words down a day. Most of them suck but some are usable. The practice really gets me into the story, though. Eventually, I get to a point where I’m running with it and I’ll write up to 4000 words a day but that’s usually when the bookend is in sight.

  I do hate rewriting and I hate editing. I’ll do it but it’s not my favourite thing.

  Tell us about your most recent book.
  The book follows a family that was displaced from the lands that they had called home forever when the reserve that they were forced onto in the Treaty making process was illegally taken over by the Canadian government. The family ends up in the bush and the Granny makes a living selling moonshine. Eventually, the family ends up back in the city and the book situates around an Indigenous neighbourhood. It follows two main characters, Daniel, a whiny little university brat and his grandmother, a badass Metis lady who switches from making moonshine to selling weed brownies to finance her move to Vancouver Island. Daniel grapples with being the first person in his family to go through university and then work a government job. There’s violence, there’s humour, there’s love and caring and community and the odd 69 joke.

  What are you working on now/next?
  I’ve got a new poetry collection coming out in Spring 2023. It’s titled Old Gods and it’s really carried by a long poem that won The Malahat Review’s 2021 Long Poem Contest. It’s about Metis road networks and the stories that are carried through generations on them, and the love of a landscape.

  I’ve also got a new novel coming out in Spring 2024 titled Prairie Edge. It centres around two Metis characters who get fed up with the current protest movements and lack of action/capitalist takeover of ideas and decide to steal a whole herd of bison and release them in the middle of an urban city. Then shit goes south and it follows the two as they deal with that and pulls in Metis oral storytelling traditions, humour, the balance of intergenerational trauma and healing and a return to what post-colonialism can really look like as the characters figure out their own decolonization processes. It’s funny. The main character makes a living stealing catalytic convertors, which is something that is a common occurrence up here in the north. That alone is worth a book.

• Fiddlehead - https://thefiddlehead.ca/content/interview-conor-kerr-poetry-winner

  An Interview with Conor Kerr, Poetry Winner
  Posted on April 20, 2020
  Photo of Conor Kerr paddling a canoe
  The Fiddlehead Editor Sue Sinclair interviewed Conor Kerr about his poem, "Amiskwaciy Nehiyawak (Beaver Hills Cree),” that won our Ralph Gustafson Poetry Prize and will appear in the Spring 2020 issue of The Fiddlehead (no. 283).

  Sue Sinclair: This poem feels very gentle in spirit, very tender in its attentions, yet it has style, a little swagger (“We’re going to swish it up” and “Bounce is too much, but hell bounce is too much for everyone”). I don’t know if “swagger” feels like the right word to you, but if it does or is close, why opt for a narrative voice with a little swagger for this poem?

  Conor Kerr: This poem is straight up my grandma, Pat. That lady has mad swagger and you can see it in all her interactions, conversations, and how she moves through this world. She doesn’t do anything half-assed. That includes making her moonshine on the Northside of Edmonton. She did that for years, until my grandfather passed away and she decided at the age of 87 to hightail it out to Vancouver Island. Now she currently makes moonshine in her assisted-living building there. Nice thing about Vancouver Island is she has more access to fresh blackberries, and other fruits so her “swish” quality has gone through the roof. If I’m writing something that’s from her attitude or mindset, it’s going to be one of not buying into the constraints of a western system. To put this in perspective, Pat is the kind of lady who could care less about my degrees, awards, etc., but she’ll brag to her friends all day about the time I was dealt a hand of 29 in crib. In her eyes that’s the greatest accomplishment one could ever get.

  SS: One of my favourite moments in the poem is when granny “reconciles” with the house gardens by picking their flowers and berries at night. I love the way you’ve torqued this very loaded word, love the idea of this secret “reconciliation” that is entirely on granny’s terms. What does reconciliation mean to you?

  CK: Reconciliation is a government term. I love laughing at the idea of my grandmother and her friends using the word reconciliation, or even my cousins, it’s a term and word that doesn’t translate down to a community level. That would never happen. It doesn’t exist to them and it never will, especially as Canada continues to reinforce colonial patriarchy on Indigenous communities and peoples. I’ve worked for all levels of bureaucracy at this point and I know a good buzz word when I see one. Right now I feel it’s transitioning more towards decolonization or Indigenization, but still these words are being used in the same context as reconciliation, which is truly a financial term. The only time reconciliation makes sense to me is when I’m doing the budget for the Indigenous Student Centre at NorQuest College. But that’s classic Canada, creating a financially based word to talk about their future and past relationships with Indigenous Peoples.

  So after that tangent, in the context of this poem, I would say it’s less reconciliation and more LAND BACK. Granny, as a strong Indigenous matriarch, is mocking reconciliation and reclaiming her agency and place on the territory that her ancestors have called home for countless generations.

  SS: Who is your ideal audience for this poem?

  CK: You know, honestly, I’ve never thought much about audience. I’m still amazed that anyone wants to read anything I’ve written. I think there are a lot of lonely Indigenous People in these cities who feel a disconnect from everything and everyone around them. I really felt that when I was in university and I took it out in my actions. If someone who’s feeling lonely chances along one of these poems and thinks, “oh shit now that’s funny, go get them Granny!” And ideally they smile a bit and know that there are forms of resistance happening at all levels, doesn’t matter how small or insignificant it seems, it all counts.

  But that being said I’m realistic about the people who read literary magazines and it’s not my Grandma and her friends. So basically, in an ideal situation, I see this cycle where some prof (hint hint all you out there) will bring this poem into their class. Half the students will think it’s horseshit, and the rest might not care, but there may be one or two who connect. Mind you if the prof or other person also connects to it because they’re feeling out of place in a western academic institution then that’s perfect too. Or they’re a settler ally and this teaches them something new….. ahh shit, who am I kidding, poetry is for everyone. Except billionaires.

  SS: The poem’s title is the name of a people, “Amiskwaciy Nehiyakwak,” translated in parentheses as “Beaver Hills Cree.” The poem itself is an ode to one person: granny. How do you see the title relating to the rest of the poem?

  CK: The vast majority of settlers have no comprehension about how Indigenous peoples lived prior to colonization. To them everyone was running around in the groups that would eventually become the individual First Nations. It wasn’t like that at all though. The families that would become Enoch Cree Nation or Papaschase First Nation didn’t refer to themselves by those names until long after Treaty, the Indian Act, and the reservation systems were really put into place. They would have referred to themselves in the Edmonton area as the Amiskwaciy Nehiyawak, Beaver Hills Cree. Just like down south from Edmonton they would have referred to themselves as the Maskwacis Nehiyawak, Bears Hills Cree. It was way more fluid than it is now. My family is descended from the Amiskwaciy Nehiyawak that would eventually become the Papaschase First Nation, as well as the Cree speaking Metis communities from this area. There are people, like Dr. Dwayne Donald, who are a lot smarter than me that have done fantastic and really informing research on this. So to keep a long story long, the title is also Granny’s way of reclaiming Land Back in this territory by referring to it by its proper name. But since I’m an educator I’m used to putting in rough translations to help people start grasping the concepts.

  Conor Kerr is Metis, descended from the Fort des Prairies and Lac Ste. Anne communities. He grew up in Buffalo Pound Lake, Saskatchewan and currently lives in Edmonton where he's a part-time magpie interpreter, Labrador Retriever wrestler, harvester, and educator. Conor feels honoured to live and write on the lands that his family has called home since time immemorial.

• The Malahat Review - https://malahatreview.ca/interviews/kerr_interview2.html

  Stillness & Movement: Délani Valin in Conversation with Conor KerrConor Kerr
  Malahat Review poetry and fiction board member Délani Valin talks with Conor Kerr, co-winner of the 2021 Long Poem Prize with his poem, "Just Passing Through."

  Conor Kerr is a Métis/Ukrainian educator, writer and harvester. He is a member of the Métis Nation of Alberta, part of the Edmonton Indigenous community and is descended from the Lac Ste. Anne & Fort Des Prairies Métis communities and the Papaschase Cree Nation. His first books, a poetry collection An Explosion of Feathers and a short story collection Avenue of Champions will be published in 2021.

  Read what the judges had to say about his winning poem.

  Of your winning poem, “Just Passing Through,” the judges have said that it is “divided into road trips criss-crossing the western provinces” and that “the poem in its very structure stitches us into Métis history.” Many of the sections are named after passages such as “Vancouver to Edmonton” or refer to specific highways. At the same time, the poem feels very grounded in the land, with references to trapping and picking berries. There’s a sense of movement with these road trips, and when still, the speaker talks of “the need for constant mobility.” Could you speak about these tensions, and how they came to be articulated in the poem?

  I’ve only ever existed in a constant state of motion, mobility, movement. I love driving. I have no problem hammering out a twelve or fourteen hour drive. Even my leisurely activities of bird hunting and golfing involve walking large distances. I don’t like sitting still and I think that’s a trait that’s been passed down through generations of badass Metis and Cree ancestors. My grandparents would drive eight hours for a party and then back the next day. I know Elders right now who will drive twelve hours for a ceremony or visiting and then come back shortly after. My friends get mad at me because I describe everything as being four hours away. Kamloops? Four hours. Moose Jaw? Four hours. Saskatoon? Four hours. Lethbridge? Four hours. (Note none of these are four hours away from Edmonton.)

  But at the same time everything is based around our relationships with landscapes and kinscapes. Just as that constant mobility defines us so do the areas that hold generations of blood, tears, sweat, laughs, loves, and everything that captures the human experience. I tend to always remember landscapes in sunsets and sunrises, or those dusky hazes of childhood memories. I remember Moose Jaw being the biggest city in the world, and the skyscrapers of Regina (there are no skyscrapers in Regina) towering over everything. It’s always interesting to go back to these places as an adult. To see the distances that used to hold so much promise, so much freedom, so much emotion. In a way they still do, but I feel like I’m losing that childlike fascination and I don’t want to.

  In terms of structure, the poem alternates between sections containing fairly tight stanzas, and sections with long lines that skip across the page. Stillness and movement seem to be expressed in the very shape of the poem. Can you talk a little bit about the structure of “Just Passing Through,” and how and why you made these stylistic decisions?

  I think my main reasoning, and I could be completely misremembering this now, was to break up the tedium of roadtrips with snapshots into a more subtle, still life. You get these intense strong narrative poems that are then contrasted with what I hope are little images. Snapshots in time. I want to try and capture the way that certain things looked at certain periods in my life or in the oral histories of my family and these short poems, which is what they are, poems within poems, can bring me back too. I have specific memories for example of being a really little kid trapping crayfish. Which was my main obsession at the time. We used bricks for traps. And as you can see in the poem I really wanted that to be the main image, more for myself than anything. To capture it so I won’t forget it.

  The poem opens with the lyrics of a Michif song called “La Montagne Tortue.” More song lyrics are included throughout the poem as well. Do songs and orality typically play a role in your writing? What was the process of integrating this onto the written page?

  I’m very musical. I tend to have songs constantly running through my head. And TBH I absolutely love this song. I spent a lot of time looking into historical and contemporary Metis song and music culture and this one in particular gets me fired up. Please listen to it. You’ll hear exactly what I’m talking about. And I love this idea of all these Red River carts and horses bouncing across the prairie playing this song in tune, out of tune, at different times. But this musical brigade rolling around and doing it’s thing. Love that image.

  Temporality also features heavily in this poem. In one passage, there are examples of developments and perhaps gentrification such as, “they bring the railcars to Calgary. Bitumen blackens the sky and fills the corporate / Headquarters with unrefined crude.” Later, the speaker of the poem says, “I’ll hold my fiddle high in the air and play out a keeping time.” How do space and time interact in the poem? How does having a Métis perspective influence your relationship with time?

  I don’t think it’s ever about time. I’ve struggled my entire life to work within the timelines of colonial systems. I absolutely cannot work at a job that needs me there exactly at 8 AM and then I have to leave at 5 PM or whatever. I will show up when I want and I will leave when I want. I’ve done that my entire life. Thankfully, I’ve spent the last ten years working in Indigenous organizations, or when I’ve worked for western institutions at least I’ve had unbelievable bosses (all badass First Nations women) who understand that I will get the work done, it will just be on my own timeline.

  I wanted to note though that in this particular passage there’s a commentary on this western notion of “conquering nature.” I find it so contradictory to worldview this new idea (well not new, it stems from colonial attitudes towards landscapes) that you need to complete trails in record time, or go minimalist to maximize speed while backpacking or kayaking or whatever. Snap your Instagram photo and roll out with no regard to the natural landscapes around you except for the idea of conquering something. Bagging peaks or whatever they call it. My family does these multi-week-long canoe trips up in northern Saskatchewan and the “Arc’teryx and Patagonia” outdoors people would be distraught if they saw what we bring on them. Just for an example there will be multiple guitars, and sometimes a mandolin….

  When tackling a project that spans years and kilometres, what is your writing process like? How does the process of this project compare to that of your other poetry and stories?

  I wrote this entire poem over the course of about a week, week and a half, in the bathtub. It was end of January, beginning of February and fucking cold outside. Like -40 without the wind chill cold, prairie cold. And I have two beautiful Labrador retrievers, Niska and Zaya who don’t give a shit if it’s that cold out they still need to go for walks. So I’d take them for our 6 AM walk in the darkness, get back about an hour later, hop in the bathtub to warm up with two or three cups of black coffee. Everyone should try and write poetry in the bathtub. Highly recommend it. I’d write in there and refill the water a couple times if the words were really flowing that day. My dogs would barge into the bathroom and the younger one Niska would try and get in the bathtub with me and I’d have to get them both to lay down, which they’d do (not in the tub), and then they’d be snoring away while I thought about highways. I like the lack of distractions in a bathtub.

  This poem in particular has been a long time coming. I’m an incredibly social person, extrovert by all definitions, and the pandemic has absolutely destroyed me. Usually, the only way I can get through the winters is by spending long nights sitting around fires playing cards with friends or visiting with Elders. But since those weren’t options I found I had to turn into myself and to think more about the events of my life. What defines a prairie life? How does one understand the landscapes around us and how they’ve impacted our psyche? A lot of this rests in my grandparents, and parents, Metis and Ukrainian, who have very different worldviews about what these all mean but at the end of the day have been able to make those coexist in a way. I’m fortunate and privileged to have been able to know all my grandparents. My paternal grandfather passed away three years ago, when I was twenty eight. But outside of that all my grandparents are alive and partying on Vancouver Island now. A long way from the prairies of their childhoods. They inform all my writing right now. I find them fascinating. At some point I’ll have to figure out other sources of inspiration.

  I’d like to think that this poem was crafted differently than other pieces of my writing but that would be a lie.

  You have a forthcoming collection of poetry, An Explosion of Feathers, and a forthcoming collection of short stories, Avenue of Champions, slated for release later this year. Could you talk a little more about these projects?

  Yeah! My first poetry collection An Explosion of Feathers is being published through Bookland Press and Avenue of Champions is coming out through Nightwood Editions. Both of these collections were basically the end results of my MFA classes at UBC. The short story collection in particular was my thesis, and the poetry collection probably could have been if I had decided to go that route. I’m still amazed that anyone wants to read anything I’ve ever written. I only had my first poem published (in The Malahat Review) a little under two years ago I think. I hope people like the books, but I also understand that my writing style isn’t for everyone (definitely learned that in MFA workshops). But it’ll still be fun to see actual books of my writing out in the world. I hope that some lonely ass little kid like I was picks them up at some point and finds some solace in them. Or that they inspire educators, social workers, just people in general to do better. Or to rethink their stereotypical concepts of Indigeneity.

  I’m also pretty excited because I have a complete second poetry manuscript tentatively titled Coyote Gods (which contains “Just Passing Through”) that I’m currently trying to find a publisher for. I also have two complete novels that I’m working on developing a bit further with the help of my agents. I think next I’m going to try my hand at more creative nonfiction, but I can’t help but write poetry constantly.

  The books will be available from everywhere online but I encourage you to buy them from your local bookstores.

• The Malahat Review - https://www.malahatreview.ca/interviews/kerr_interview.html

  Another World: James Kendrick in Conversation with Conor KerrConor Kerr
  Conor Kerr, whose poem "Directions to the Culture Grounds" appeared in The Malahat Review's Spring 2019 Issue #206, discusses collectivism, chopping wood, and reconnecting with his community in his Q&A with Malahat Review volunteer James Kendrick.

  Conor Kerr is a Metis writer/educator, raised in Buffalo Pound, Saskatchewan and connected to the Lac Ste. Anne community. He's a student in UBC's MFA program and works at NorQuest College's Indigenous Student Centre. When not working or writing Conor canoes, hunts, wrestles dogs, and harvests on his ancestors traditional territories. He's passionate about creating a new narrative around urban Indigenous youth and connecting them to culture and community. This is his first published work ever.

  In your poem, “Directions to the Culture Grounds” geographical space takes on great significance—I’m curious about the destination of the directions given in the poem. Could you talk a bit about this space, what it is, and why you chose it as the subject of this poem?

  It’s all about the land. I felt so lost for so long without knowing why and now I believe it was directly because of a lack of/absence from my Metis culture and that I belong and need to be/walk/harvest in my traditional territory. I spent most of my university years pretending to be someone I wasn’t, which basically just led to me being an asshole alcoholic. That guy at the party. So despite that I stumbled into this space through what I strongly believe wasn’t just luck but an invisible gust of hot snotty moose breath pushing me forward, and met Bob Cardinal, an Elder on Enoch Cree Nation. He helped me so much in reconnecting back with my family, the community, my self, and building back up my confidence in who I am as a Metis person. And through all of that we cut wood out at this space, we participated in ceremony, we hunted moose, we wandered through the woods, fought with generators and disappearing tools, ate good food, and chopped more wood. When I worked on Enoch and needed a break from the traumas of my job I would just drive out here and sit down in the snow and imagine flocks of cranes spiralling up above me. It’s all about the land. I feel very fortunate that I've spent most of my life around Cree and Metis Elders and been able to learn from them and to hear their stories and words.

  Using Google Maps, I was able to follow the directions given in the poem, and find the location you describe. I was struck by the fact that, in satellite view, it’s even possible to find small details listed in your poem, including the dilapidated lodges and the circular shack depicted in the climax. The orange pylon marking the entrance can even be seen close up in street view on Township Road 523. So in a sense, your poem can literally function as directions. However, is there also a sense in which this poem consists of directions to a figurative space, despite the inclusion of such a great number of factual details regarding location?

  You know when I first wrote this thing up I really struggled with whether I should use actual directions or just make it up. I asked Bob, and he said, and I’m not doing justice to his words here, but he told me something along the lines of: “even stories need truth in them.” We discussed it a bit more and the thing with this space is it carries huge importance for teachings in the community and into Amiskwaciy Waskahegan. I’ve been out there keeping the fires going while Bob and his oskapeyos work with groups of government staff, social workers, families, educators, program administrators, private organizations, politicians… it goes on and on.
  I’ve always admired the transformation that happens to people when they come out here. Even though it’s so close to a city of one and a half million people you feel like you’re in another world, and really you are when compared to the concrete jungle office environments that people are spending their days in. I’m not sure what it is but I think it’s the noise. There’s a difference between sounds of sirens and motors and hearing the wings of the ducks passing overhead at first light, or the wind moving through leaves and old willow that’s gone back to the earth. I’ve enjoyed sitting back and drinking a big cup of percolator coffee and watching some of these suits, professors, students, build intense connections with the trees around them. You can feel the love passing between them. But I can’t help but feel so much disgust that these connections have been taken away from Indigenous Peoples and that right now there are youth that will never feel that and they have every right to feel that.

  The two sections of your poem are titled “Social Worker Version” and “Elder Version.” From your bio, I can see that you have a rather extensive background in social work yourself. Is there an extent to which this poem is a form of self-critique?

  I never worked directly as a social worker. I worked in or around social work offices as an Indigenous community liaison, mainly with Paul, Enoch and Alexander First Nations. As someone who worked with front line social workers I have all the respect in the world for what they do, especially Indigenous social workers, who have a whole other burden placed on them that I won’t get into here. One of the main duties in my job when I was out there was creating cultural connections for Indigenous youth. I brought a lot of these youth out to this space. There, they had the opportunity to see something so so different than the lifestyle that is all around you when you’re a 15 year old Metis guy in a group home. You see other young guys, they’re chopping wood, man that’s all I do is chop wood, and it seems like what kid would want to do that. Then you put an axe in their hand, show them how to swing it without taking their knee out and, oh man, how their faces just light up. It’s contributing back to the community, something that’s so inherent in our youth but has been systematically forced out over generations. They want that collectivism, that sense of being a part of something, being a part of something great and they are because every breath they take is a breath of resistance for even being here. If I help one youth have a better future where they’re more confident in who they are as an Indigenous Person then I’d consider everything I’ve ever done a success.

  Anyways, I’d be trying to bring kids out there and relying on social workers or foster parents or group home workers or whoever to get them there. And I just noticed how different it was between the directions you would get on the phone from a knowledge keeper over those from a government employee through emails. I know I mention social workers in the poem but really it could be anyone who works outside of the land and stories. It’s just so technical, so abrupt, it loses the rhythm and cadence of voice. I’m feeling a bit of that even typing this up. I tend to write like I talk. I believe that those words translate off the page too. If you’re reading something that doesn’t have feeling, have the intent, have the thought behind it then it’s going to come across as shallow. Unfortunately, I think a lot of people read into things like the social worker directions in this poem when they receive them in their own life and automatically downplay it. When really there is such beauty and history in every little word and it can be told like so. Why can’t we tell our stories and our families stories in emails or conversations? But that being said I’m sure my coworkers at the College I work at don’t want to get emails that go right into the history of my family in the Edmonton area every time they ask for help with protocol.

  I realized that doesn't really answer your question. So now that I went on that ramble, I think it's more of a reminder than a self-critique. I'm being told by Elders all the time to slow down, that I move too fast, that I need to remember the purpose and the intent and to really think about it. Last year I broke my leg really badly, snapped my ankle and both bones in the lower right leg. A couple knowledge keepers from Enoch and some buddies came over to my house to have a pipe ceremony and they were just making fun of me the entire time, "see when you didn't slow down the creator made you slow down," one of them said. Good people.

  At what point did you begin writing poetry, and what motivated you to do so?

  Oh I wrote so much emo shit when I was in high school. I basically just copied Alexisonfire, Taking Back Sunday, and A Day To Remember lyrics out and changed a few words and told people I was a $!pOeT!$ in my MSN Messenger status. And honestly my motivation was probably to try and impress all the incredible women in my life, including my grandmothers, aunties, mother, teachers, and my friends at the school. I come from a matriarchal family where my grandmother was, and still is, the boss of everything. She’s also this badass storyteller who was raised by her granny in the bush of Northern Alberta. I was fortunate to grow up with her. She’s very proud to be Metis and to carry those bloodlines back to the Manitou Sakaheganak area. One thing that always stuck with me from her is the resiliency to always tell a story no matter what.

  The only reason I finished my undergraduate degree was because of poetry courses taught by Christine Stewart (she just published an unreal book of poetry, Treaty 6 Deixis) and knows this space I wrote about here well. It took me a long time to understand some of her courses and what she was trying to expose us too, way longer than the four months of actual classroom time, but I feel it really helped shape the way I look at poetry. I wrote this one poem where I took some Cree lines from my family, honestly I can’t remember much more than that, but Christine really liked it and encouraged me to continue to write in that vein. Up until that point, teachers had only ever shut me down fast anytime I tried to bring up an Indigenous voice. I won a poetry award in the last year of my undergrad and used the $1200 to buy a new duck-hunting shotgun and an aluminum canoe. I remember thinking, this poetry shit isn’t that bad if it can get me more birds.

  Do you have any other works in progress, or that are forthcoming to be published, which you would like to talk about?

  Actually, I just heard today that I’m going to have a non-fiction piece coming out in the Indigenous Writers issue of Grain. That one and this one are the only two pieces that I’ve submitted anywhere. Part of me wants to stop right now and call it with a 100% acceptance rate and add that into my Instagram bio next to the 20/20 vision and cavity free since ‘88 line. Really though, I only submitted because my professors in the MFA program at UBC told me that it will help with scholarship applications. I don’t know how much interest I have in continuing to do so.

Conor Kerr

Avenue of Champions

Gibsons, British Columbia.

Nightwood Editions. 2021. 224 pages.

EDMONTON HAD ANOTHER name for 118 Avenue, forgotten when the Albertan city shifted to a grid system; others call it the Avenue of Champions. Conor Kerr's debut novel invites readers to reflect on rewritten history, via now-grown characters' experiences, memories, and ancestral pasts.

The author's ancestors include members of the Red River Métis settlement, the Papaschase Cree Nation, and Ukrainian settlers; Avenue of Champions presents varied perspectives also. One young woman lives blocks from the historic Papaschase Reservation, and her grandmother fled to the bush after late nineteenth-century colonial powers gutted the Papaschase: the novel spirals around their kinship network. Gaps and silences hold trauma, transformation, and resilience: "My mother told me he died from heartbreak from being forced off the land he had loved. Uncle Jim told me it was TB. Either way, Granny never talked about her husband."

The cityscape is their landscape: "a bridge that always smelled like backed-up sewer," "dingy-ass walk-up apartments," and a "hole in the fence that some boys cut out to make a shortcut for their bottle depot runs." Some residents are "old-school Avenue ... local hood," and others inhabit a "chemical void of unpredictability." That "wood-burning stove" with an "iron pot of tea" filled "with spruce needles and dried wild mint" is only a memory.

The neighborhood is simultaneously overpoliced and lawless: "At some point we can hear sirens but those could be the sirens for a million different things around here." Liminal spaces represent chaos and possibilities. One Indigenous character who tours the university is arrested, his presence seemingly inexplicable. But, later: "An English prof told me once that Thomas King wrote about stories and how it's all turtles all the way down. Well [Avenue of Champions] is slumlords ... all the way down."

Kerr adopts Cherokee-Greek storyteller Thomas King's dedication to characterization. His linked characters reflect a holistic worldview, as with Turtle Mountain Chippewa author Louise Erdrich's novels. Imagined interconnections populate Dogrib Tlicho writer Richard Van Camp's fiction and Dawn Dumont's fiction about Okanese Cree/Nehewin life too. In Five Little Indians, Michelle Good, a Red Pheasant Cree Nation author, presents polyphonic experiences of the legacy of colonialism. In Probably Ruby, Métis and nêhiyaw writer Lisa Bird-Wilson situates her narrator in a weblike network too.

Some of these novelists, like Kerr, are also poets. They polish their prose, distill experience, and require readers to invest in the process, offering substantial rewards to the patient and curious.

Marcie McCauley

Toronto

Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2022 University of Oklahoma
http://www.worldliteraturetoday.com
Source Citation
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McCauley, Marcie. "Conor Kerr: Avenue of Champions." World Literature Today, vol. 96, no. 3, May-June 2022, p. 67. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A703850983/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=23363687. Accessed 8 May 2024.

Avenue of Champions

Conor Kerr

Nightwood Editions

c/o Harbour Publishing

www.harbourpublishing.com

9780889714182, $21.95, PB, 256pp

https://www.amazon.com/Avenue-Champions-Conor-Kerr/dp/0889714185

Synopsis: Daniel is a young Metis man searching for a way to exist in a world of lateral violence, intergenerational trauma and systemic racism. Facing obstacles of his own at every turn, he observes and learns from the lived realities of his family members, friends, teachers and lovers. He finds hope in the inherent connection of Indigenous Peoples to their land, and the permanence of culture, language and ceremony in the face of displacement.

Set in Edmonton, "Avenue of Champions" considers Indigenous youth in relation to the urban constructs and colonial spaces in which they survive--from violence, whitewashing, trauma and racism to language revitalization, relationships with Elders, restaking land claims and ultimately, triumph. Although a work of fiction, "Avenue of Champions" is based on Papaschase and Metis oral histories and lived experience.

Critique: All the more impressive when considering that "Avenue of Champions" is short story author and poet Conor Kerr's debut as a novelist, this is an absorbing, entertaining, and thought-provoking story that showcases his genuine flair as a wordsmith and his talents for the kind of narrative driven storytelling that compels the reader's total attention from first page to last. Simply stated, "Avenue of Champions" is an inherently interesting novel that is especially and unreservedly recommended for personal reading lists, as well as community, college, and university library Contemporary Literary Fiction collections.

Editorial Note: Conor Kerr is a Metis/Ukrainian educator, writer and harvester. He is a member of the Metis Nation of Alberta, part of the Edmonton Indigenous community and is descended from the Lac Ste. Anne and Fort Des Prairies Metis communities and the Papaschase Cree Nation. His Ukrainian family settled in Treaty 4 territory in Saskatchewan. Conor works as the manager of Indigenous relations and supports at NorQuest College. In 2019, Conor received The Fiddlehead's Ralph Gustafson Poetry Prize. His writing has been anthologized in Best Canadian Stories 2020, Best Canadian Poetry 2020 and has appeared in literary magazines across Canada.

Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2022 Midwest Book Review
http://www.midwestbookreview.com
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"Avenue of Champions." Internet Bookwatch, Apr. 2022, p. NA. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A706735782/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=1ecdc3c6. Accessed 8 May 2024.

Kerr, Conor PRAIRIE EDGE Univ. of Minnesota (Fiction None) $25.95 6, 4 ISBN: 9781517917234

A slow-moving, quietly furious portrait of two Indigenous Canadians and their attempts to ignite a protest movement.

Grey Ginther and Isidore "Ezzy" Desjarlais, 20-something distant cousins living in Edmonton, share a history and a culture--they're both members of the Métis community--but little else. Grey, a recent graduate of the University of Alberta with a degree in Native studies and a job lined up at a nonprofit, is an eager participant in protest movements for Indigenous rights, eventually organizing her own events and gaining a following on social media. Ezzy, who never went to high school and grew up in and out of foster homes, embodies the apathy that Grey fights against. His days filled with booze and petty crime, Ezzy is mostly focused on the daily struggle of existing as a Métis man in contemporary Edmonton, where discrimination is commonplace: "All I knew was survival mode." When the two meet at a protest, Grey takes an interest in the aimless Ezzy, who shares her belief in "Land Back" reconciliation for Indigenous communities, if not her idealism about the possibility of meaningful change, and a cautious friendship begins. After Ezzy is released from a stint in prison, he reconnects with Grey, and the two hatch a plan: to steal a herd of bison and move them to a river valley in the center of Edmonton. While the stunt inspires new protests and increased public attention on Indigenous rights, Ezzy's troubled past and proclivity for violence eventually envelop them both, with devastating consequences. Narration alternates between the two protagonists, though the difference in perspective isn't always clear; the novel's measured tone can also feel at odds with the intensity of its plot, particularly in one scene where Grey is threatened with sexual violence.

A powerful, if meandering, tale of friendship and hope in the face of intergenerational trauma.

Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2024 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
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Source Citation
MLA 9th Edition APA 7th Edition Chicago 17th Edition Harvard
"Kerr, Conor: PRAIRIE EDGE." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Apr. 2024, p. NA. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A789814879/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=b992e0c4. Accessed 8 May 2024.

McCauley, Marcie. "Conor Kerr: Avenue of Champions." World Literature Today, vol. 96, no. 3, May-June 2022, p. 67. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A703850983/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=23363687. Accessed 8 May 2024. "Avenue of Champions." Internet Bookwatch, Apr. 2022, p. NA. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A706735782/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=1ecdc3c6. Accessed 8 May 2024. "Kerr, Conor: PRAIRIE EDGE." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Apr. 2024, p. NA. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A789814879/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=b992e0c4. Accessed 8 May 2024.

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