Where award-winning writer Gregory Scofield finds the power in poetry
April is National Poetry Month. To celebrate, CBC Books asked poets the question: "What is the power of poetry?"
Gregory Scofield is a Métis poet and author. He was the 2016 recipient of the Latner Writers' Trust Poetry Prize, a $25,000 award given to an accomplished mid-career poet.
Scofield's seventh poetry collection, Witness, I Am, is an emotionally vibrant, determined meditation on missing and murdered Indigenous women.
"Poetry can be so succinct in a way — poetry is, of course, a form of storytelling. The power of poetry is that it's also oral, it's meant to be spoken, it's meant to be heard.
"I think there is a power in vocalizing, in telling those stories out loud and allowing people to listen and absorb those stories. So I think that's really the power of poetry."