SASKATOON — Money won by poet Alycia Two Bears through the Kemosa Scholarship for First Nations, Métis and Inuit Mothers Who Write went directly to publishing her second poetry collection, The Feast: Two Spirit Stories, Sex and the Ceremony behind it all and other Poems.
Two Bears, a mixed-blood iskwew (woman) from Mistawasis Nêhiyawak First Nation in Saskatchewan, took the second-place scholarship of $2,000 for a collection of poems she hopes will become her third book.
The Kemosa Scholarship was developed eight years ago, the impetus of writer and physician Nhung Tran-Davis in collaboration with the Writers’ Guild of Alberta. Since that time, it has grown in support to recognize more winners with increased funding.
The purpose of the scholarship is to support Indigenous mothers in their writing, which fits well with section two of The Feast, subtitled “Stories of Motherhood, My Children, Myself and the many forms love can come in”.
At The Feast book launch in Calgary in June, Two Bears read, “Webs and Fire Starters,” a poem about her son who has oppositional defiance disorder and is violent. The boy now lives full-time with his father. Two Bears writes, “I soak myself in hot water/Saturated in calendula, sea salts and oils/To repair matches striking my skin/Fists meeting my face and the ever present/I hate you/I wish you were dead/Vibrating through my ears.”
Every time she has read “Webs and Fire Starters,” Two Bears has received positive comments from mothers who have children that are similarly difficult and feel they aren’t allowed to acknowledge that because motherhood is expected to be wonderful.
“When you have very violent kiddos that you love so deeply and hurt you, we don't always get chances to talk about that because it makes other people uncomfortable. Or they don't know how to support you or what to say in the moment, and you get met with a lot of uncomfortable silence. And so when I get to read that piece in particular out loud, that uncomfortable silence is okay, and we all get to exist in how uncomfortable it was for us to survive these moments,” said Two Bears.
The Feast consists of poems collected over six years that Two Bears had posted on Instagram, written in her journals or written on the website Hello Poetry.
“When I first started writing poetry, I rambled on and on and on. I wrote the same thing in six different sentences, and then Instagram poetry started to become popular and I would read these beautiful pieces that were concise and yet still had that emotional punch that longer pieces could have,” she said.
In “Date Night,” Two Bears simply writes, “meet me at the protest.”
“It took me a really long time to work on that (short poetry approach) and to get my gift to weave its way that way,” she said. “I’m so proud of the pieces.”
The Feast is divided into four sections: Mint Tea, Berry Soup, Smoked Salmon, and Sweet Treats.
About Mint Tea, the section that starts the collection, Two Bears said, “I think it felt like a warm introduction to two-spirit, their odes and identity, like something warm that I always hold in my hands and healing. Mint Tea is so healing.”
Berry Soup, the second section, is the poems about motherhood. “I love berry soup. It's one of my favourite sweet things at any sort of gathering. I thought it suited well for motherhood and the story of my (five) children.”
About the contents in the section Smoked Salmon, Two Bears explained, “It's smoky and it's delicious, and it's fatty and it's good for you. And it leaves that nice, greasy feeling on your lips. And that to me…that is relationship, that is fantasy, that's dating, that’s sex, and that's break up.” And that is what the third section is about.
Sweet Treats ends the collection and is subtitled, “The Ceremony that holds me through it all.”
“Ceremony to me is the sweet treat of life and that is chocolate. Good, deep, dark chocolate,” she said.
Two Bears used her Kemosa Scholarship winnings to pay the majority of her collaboration fee with Wild Skies Press, a hybrid model for publishing.
The collaboration opened opportunities to her she didn’t have years earlier when she self-published her first collection of poetry. Wild Skies Press co-owner Alexis Marie Chute had a “greater wealth of knowledge than I did,” said Two Bears, “and she had a much greater network to reach across than I did.”
To be supported and understood by a non-Indigenous publisher “meant everything,” said Two Bears, who says she’s been told that Chute references The Feast in her workshops.
A recent article in The Edmonton Journal about the Alberta government’s decision to ban books from school libraries that deal with certain topics, such as LGBTQ2S plus, included a photograph of Chute holding The Feast.
“That (Chute) chose my work as a representation of ‘we can't silence queer authors, we can't silence Indigenous authors’ meant she's very aware of the intersections of my identity that are always going to be less valued in the public eye, and in the publishing realm and the literary realm as a whole,” said Two Bears.
“It is deeply important … to have somebody outside of the Indigenous connection say, ‘Hey, I want to uphold you and I want to do this collaboration and I want to do it well.’”
Two Bears and Chute agreed that The Feast would have Indigenous editors.
Two Bears, who holds degrees in general studies and education from the University of Calgary, will begin a bachelor's in midwifery this September. She hopes the poems she submitted for the Kemosa Scholarship will be part of her third collection of poetry. She expects her next work will demonstrate a further evolution in her poetry style.
“I miss really long pieces. I miss reading longer pieces and I think in my next (book)…you'll probably see that shift. The shorter pieces will still be in there, but I have a feeling I have a lot of odes I have not written yet to people I love. And those, I believe, would be longer pieces that are meant to be like spoken poetry. I feel I can write longer pieces that aren't rambly. They’re still concise but more in-depth,” said Two Bears.
The Feast: Two Spirit Stories, Sex and the Ceremony behind it all and other Poems can be purchased in bookstores or online at amazon.ca.
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