A finalist for the Governor General’s Award, Armand Garnet Ruffo’s latest poetry collection Treaty # sees the artist and scholar thinking back on the lives of his Ojibwe ancestors, the state of affairs for Indigenous Peoples today, and the treaties that changed everything.
In the foreword What the Poets Are Doing: Canadian Poets in Conversation, editor Rob Taylor gives his inspiration for the collection: 2002’s Where the Words Come From: Canadian Poets in Conversation (Nightwood Editions) edited by Tim Bowling. Where Bowling’s editorial vision encompassed an homage to Al Purdy (who died in 2000), Taylor’s honours the work of deceased poet and Tragically Hip singer Gord Downey. The title, What the Poets Are Doing, echoes a lyric from the Tragically Hip song “Poets.”