North End Love Songs

CBC Books | CBC | Posted: March 15, 2017 2:28 PM | Last Updated: July 21, 2017

Katherena Vermette

Image | BOOK COVER: North End Love Songs by Katherena Vermette

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In North End Love Songs, Katherena Vermette's debut collection of poems, the young Métis/Mennonite poet pays tribute to Winnipeg's toughest and most notorious neighbourhood: the North End. She writes of its beauty and of the loss she experienced — her brother went missing there. These are gritty poems of spare but piercing intensity.

Katherena Vermette on why quiet stories speak the loudest

North End Love Songs won the Governor General's Literary Award for poetry in 2013.

How North End Love Songs by Katherena Vermette healed Bif Naked's heart

Read an excerpt | Author interviews | More about this book

From the book

friends

her friends sit
at her living room
window
curtain pushed
aside
to watch her brother
get into a car
they gawk in their
young girl way

they are
a lot younger than
they think they are
they giggle

she watches
indifferent

Author interviews

Media Video | CBC Aboriginal : Heart: by Katherena Vermette

Caption: Katherena Vermette knows her beloved neighbourhood in Winnipeg has a reputation for violence and racism, and the Governor General Award-winning Métis poet is using the power of words to change that.

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More about this book

Media Audio | Q : Katherena Vermette's musical tribute to Winnipeg's North End

Caption: The Governor General's Award for fiction finalist pays tribute to her hometown in Winnipeg, Manitoba.

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