Full interview with Billy-Ray Belcourt, author of This Wound is a World, at Eden Mills Writers’ Festival
Karen K. Tran: In the past you’ve described your work as something that’s focused on the “Indigenous paranormal.” Could you explain what you mean by that?
Billy-Ray Belcourt: That’s more about my academic writing about some of the structural conditions of native life in contemporary Canada. So I’m thinking about what it means to exist now in the wake of the 20th century, where we saw some of the most egregious forms of state-sanctioned violence against native people. Now that that is a violence that we bear at a metaphysical level — at the levels of the social and political — what does that say about our ways of thinking and desiring in the present? I also try to infuse that into my poetic work as well to communicate what it is to be anchored by grief while also being desirous of another kind of world. It’s sort of a depressive work but also work that is fundamentally about the proliferation of joy and care.
KT: You write a lot about your Indigenous identity in This Wound is a World. Why do you think it’s so important to include more Indigenous voices in Canadian literature?
BRB: There were a few native authors here and I think that for a festival of this size which is actually quite small, it’s well-curated — it’s great. To have two native poets on the three person poetry panel is just so fantastic, I think. Inviting us to festivals like this will allow readers to encounter work that they don’t necessarily see in the stands, like in the entryways of Chapters, for example. Writers like us don’t necessarily have the same marketing teams behind us those who publish with major publishers. It’s not only a method of diversification but also exposure. Essentially, “how do we build a more capacious and ethical literary world?” Part of how I think we do that is by indigenizing our festivals.
KT: What’s next for you?
BRB: I’m currently working on my PhD and I also have a new book of poetry book coming out Fall 2019 with House of Anansi press. It’s called NDN Coping Mechanisms: Notes from the Field. I’m also dabbling in fiction, but we’ll see if that goes anywhere.
KT: What are you currently reading?
BRB: I’m reading C.A. Conrad’s While Standing in Line for Death.
Feature photo by Karen K. Tran/The Ontarion