{"id":10858,"date":"2021-06-10T15:27:43","date_gmt":"2021-06-10T10:27:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/spawn-marie-andree-gill-kristen-renee-miller\/"},"modified":"2023-02-14T01:32:21","modified_gmt":"2023-02-13T20:32:21","slug":"spawn-marie-andree-gill-kristen-renee-miller","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/editorials\/spawn-marie-andree-gill-kristen-renee-miller\/","title":{"rendered":"Piekuakami (The Lake): Spawn<\/em> by Marie-Andre\u00e9 Gill tr. Kristen Renee Miller"},"content":{"rendered":"

Marie-Andr\u00e9e Gill\u2019s Spawn<\/em> maps a human journey onto the life cycle of the ouananiche, fish who could also be called freshwater salmon, though doing so would sacrifice precision. Originally published as Frayer<\/em> by La Peuplade (2017) and translated from the fran\u00e7ais qu\u00e9b\u00e9cois by Kristen Renee Miller, Spawn <\/em>is both subject and verb\u2014a stream of sectioned, untitled lyrics that weave stages of growth with the tension of inherited imperial language.<\/p>\n

Spawn<\/em> investigates the meaning of viability in a colonial world of blind-eye capitalism, diving into experience with youthful verve. We learn that in Ilnu, ouananiche translates to \u201cshe who is found everywhere \/ or little lost one.<\/em>\u201d The reader is introduced to \u201cWe the unlikely \/ the aftermath…We the territory \/ in a word.\u201d Spawn <\/em>is active, at odds with settler narratives and artificial construction, stories not animated but \u201cengraved: \/ beaver \/ snowshoes \/ canoe, bear \/ drab cement \/ drab procession.\u201d<\/p>\n

The first named section of the book is \u201cThe Rampart,\u201d a heading of imposed fortifications and cultural seizure. Against the region\u2019s historical backdrop, adolescent awakenings fuse with worldly frustration: \u201cI want this whole thing over with \/ like that first french on the rampart.\u201d Infrastructure is as fraught as language, both of which survivors must live by: \u201con the main street \/ we draw game migrations \/ and curves of the stock exchange in chalk.\u201d <\/em><\/p>\n

This \u201cwe\u201d layers earthly knowledge on consumer mirage, folding into an image of wistful romance: petals plucked \u201cto be sure that someday\/we\u2019ll be loved.\u201d Teen reverie bleeds into a passing indictment of exclusive settler hegemony. Languages and imagery elide with a seamlessness both magical and devastating: \u201cthe northern lights dancing on nintendo \u2026 your joie de vivre \/ orangeade in a squirt gun.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHow do you swallow the lake\u2019s beauty with all these ghosts chewing through its plastic-filled lung.\u201d This central question is stated, not posed. Within this angsty atmosphere, a deeper resilience is accessed. Spawn <\/em>can \u201cbathe in the malaise\u201d and is \u201cdigging a finger through the rampart\u2019s fresh cement \/ writing a name \/ never the same one.\u201d In the confusion of puberty, certain truths are known. Indigenous peoples have been living in a post-apocalyptic world for centuries. The speaker blends narratives with unsettling ease: \u201cI\u2019m in the underwater level of a video game just as the air runs out, just as that little tune begins to play\u2026we have hundreds of years \/ of cataclysm at hand.\u201d<\/p>\n

The impulse to inscribe and sort through via writing asserts itself throughout the collection. The speaker is \u201cplaying with a thumbtack in math class. Sucking blood from a name \/ etched in my arm.\u201d There is a power and practice in spelling things out. We see \u201clove u 4-ever\u201d written in a diary and \u201con the benches the cement the trees.\u201d<\/p>\n

While the collective \u201cwe\u201d is \u201cwaiting for a habitable word,\u201d the \u201cOuananiche revive the watercolours \/ of our blooming organs \/ time to swallow the evidence \/ of our mutant hides.\u201d A contemporary identity gives rise to its own particular sources of light, \u201ca ski-doo on asphalt at night \/ in my belly \/ with all its shooting sparks.\u201d In \u201cthe blue-grey gaze \/ of the nearly bursting lake,\u201d the speaker gradually gains a sense of surety in herself and her surroundings.<\/p>\n

Given this volume\u2019s centering of Indigenous (re)clamation and Ilnu etymology, and the lack of italics on ouananiche throughout the book, it is somewhat surprising to see ouananiche italicized on the back cover. Miller\u2019s translation incorporates French vocabulary into the English, while her Translator\u2019s Note discusses the \u201cdelicate and intense\u201d work of rendering one settler language into another, and the fascinating task of communicating Gill\u2019s complex voice.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

K.B. Thors<\/strong> is the author of Vulgar Mechanics (Coach House Books), and the Icelandic-English translator of Krist\u00edn Svava T\u00f3masd\u00f3ttir\u2019s Stormwarning (Phoneme), nominated for the 2019 PEN Literary Award for Poetry in Translation and winner of the American Scandinavian Foundation\u2019s Leif and Inger Sj\u00f6berg Prize. She is also the Spanish-English translator of Soledad Marambio\u2019s Chintungo: The Story of Someone Else (Ugly Duckling Presse). Their reviews have appeared in the Harvard Review, Lambda Literary, Carousel, and EuropeNow, among other journals.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

ARC<\/a> HITS THE HEART HARD.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cAlmost always, the ouananiche\/survives the spawning.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3382,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_hide_content":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"10756,10787","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1674,1709,1762],"tags":[],"genre":[21],"publisher":[164],"issue":[],"poet-in-residence":[],"series":[3132],"topic":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10858"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10858"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10858\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3382"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10858"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10858"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10858"},{"taxonomy":"genre","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/genre?post=10858"},{"taxonomy":"publisher","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/publisher?post=10858"},{"taxonomy":"issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/issue?post=10858"},{"taxonomy":"poet-in-residence","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/poet-in-residence?post=10858"},{"taxonomy":"series","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/series?post=10858"},{"taxonomy":"topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/topic?post=10858"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}