Do Not Enter My Soul in Your Shoes

Publisher's Description (Mawenzi House): 
Translated from French by Howard Scott 

Do not enter my soul in your shoes is a poetry collection of great sensitivity. Above all it is a cry from the heart, as if empathy and poetry were dazzled by the eruption of a volcano. Natasha Kanapé Fontaine reveals herself as a poet and Innu woman. She loves. She weeps. She shouts… to come into the world, again. The book is first of all a journey deep inside the self, with joy and love, taking the body on a path to expectation and ecstasy, a quest sustained by incisive, inventive writing, which can leap from impressions of nature to references to a Dali painting. The energy of the images and the power of this luminous, concise language amaze us.

Author's Biography (Mawenzi House): 
Natasha Kanapé Fontaine, born 1991, is a slam poet, visual artist, and environmental activist. (She has been dubbed the territorial slammer.) An Innu of the Pessamit community of North Shore, like many Aboriginal youth of her generation she spent most of her life in urban areas. In 2013 the original French verison of this book, N'entre pas dans mon âme avec tes chaussurs, won the poetry prize of the Society of Francophone Writers of America. She figures on Radio-Canada's Plus on est de fou and has been on the lit!list of ten young writers to watch. Natasha Kanapé Fontaine is part of the new generation of a people rising from the ashes. She lives in Montreal.

Resource type: Book (Fiction/Poetry)

Age recommendation: Grades 4-6, 7-9, 10-12, Post secondary

Keywords: Sun, time, country, incantation, community, peoples, life, birth, pleasure, freedom, humility, love, blood, nature, ancestors, family, grandfather, snow, river, ice, absence, reserves, reservation, rez, animal, connection, awakening, awaken, fire, resin, kiss, kisses, tobbaco, breath, breathing, smell, scent, fragrance, breeze, nomad, cry, plead, dance, moon, foliage, circle, cycle, cyclical, cigarette, skin, death

Year of publication: 2015

Publisher information: Mawenzi House