Deepwater Vee

Melanie Siebertrs"s stunning debut collection travels remote northern rivers, as well as two of Canadars"s most threatened rivers, the Athabasca and the North Saskatchewan. These rivers push the poems into a contemplation of loss and into the terrain of Alexander Mackenziers"s dreams, a buskerrs"s broken-down street riffs, and the borderland wanderings of a grandmother whose absence is felt as a presence. The poemsrs" currents are turbulent, braided, submerged. Narrative streams appear like tributaries glimpsed through brush, and then veer into unexpected territories, where boundaries blur between the self and the other, between the living and the dead, between the human and the wild and loss carries with it both music and silence. In this virtuoso collection, Melanie Siebert has transformed language into that rarest thing, a singular poetic vision.

MELANIE SIEBERT recently completed an MFA at the University of Victoria with a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Fellowship. Her writing has been broadcast on CBC Radio and published in such literary journals as The Malahat Review, Event, Prairie Fire, and in Half in the Sun, an anthology of contemporary Mennonite writing. She has been a wilderness guide on remote northern rivers from Alaska to Baffin Island for more than ten years.

Current
Deepwater Vee
Bellanca Esker
Alsek Lake
Bridge to Shell’s Albian Mine, Downstream, River Right
Busker
Busker
Surf City
Mackenzie ’s Dream
Choker
Busker
Skull Canyon
Unnamed Creek
Busker
Mackenzie ’s Dream
Grandmother
Grandmother
Hell Roaring Creek
Busker
Grass Hills, River Left, Downstream of Battleford
Grandmother
The Limit of Travels in This Direction
Busker
Mackenzie, Having Not Seen a Star Since Leaving Athabasca
Busker
Shifting, Overrun, the Symptoms, the Shoals Building
D’Aoust Esker
Nadlok—place where the deer cross
Map Unrolled on the Table
Grandmother
Letter to Kitty, Never Written
Long After Leaving, Being Overtaken with the Consequences of Suffering in the Northwest
Letter to Kitty, Never Written
Letter to Kitty, Never Written
Letter to Kitty, Never Written
Letter to Kitty, Never Written
Letter to Kitty, Never Written
Dusk
Windbound, Unnamed Camp
Tlogotsho—big place of grass
Double-Barrel Lake
The Splits
Notes
Acknowledgements