The Road to Writer’s Block (A Poem to Myself)

Turn left at desire. Take this burden

and never let go. Cling

as a burr latches onto fleece.

Be sure that your load includes

the self-imposed responsibility to learn

a threatened language: namely nêhiyawêwin.

Go home: kîwê.

Head north: kîwêtinohk itohtê.

Take a route unknown to you.

Do not plan too far

into the future. Do step forth with mute

naïveté. Invent a folktale so fantastic it can’t

be disbelieved. Do this in the same way

you would mould green truth from fact, tender

as the first prairie crocus — wâpikwanîs.

The story must tell of your entitlement:

your right to write

poetry in this native tongue. Approach

this task without foresight,

as you would a one-way street on a dark night,

backwards: naspâci.

Entitlement: a provocative word

when it comes to language and culture,

a word so easily twisted to mean

ownership. Worry about this enough

that it becomes humiliating.

Try reading and writing your second

mother tongue before listening and speaking.

Forget that poetry and Cree were spoken before written. Forget

this as you might your toothbrush, aspirins, or first-aid kit.

Forget not your Cree dictionaries,

because for all your literacy your aural

memory will be poor when you see the words

in print, twenty-five or even fifty times.

Bear the millstone of language loss

the way a woman drags home the last

buffalo: paskwâwi-mostos,

as you confront the colonial tongue.

âkayâsîmowin: the only patois

you’ll ever perform with any finesse.

Learn how you’ve not learned

another mother tongue, well, a father

tongue: Scots Gaelic. Never mind

provisions other than baggage so heavy

it will take you years to reach your destination.

Don’t forget your heaviest tool,

a wrench to repair the damage you wrought

in admonishing your father for speaking

in code: namely nêhiyawêwin.

Take a course so meandering you’ll forget

where you’re going. Learn the Latin terms,

and then forget them,

for beauty you’ll behold before

even considering their Cree existence:

pelicans, bitterns, Great Blue herons, mergansers.

Now, write these bird words in nêhiyawêwin:

cahcahkiwak, môhkahâsiwak, misi-môhkahâsiwak, asihkwak.

Detour around decades of indifference

until you’re so far past puberty

that learning a second language disorients

you the way adolescence

attacks all its victims,

the way an overturned canoe crashes

through wild rapids.

Become so encumbered procrastination

offers your only reprieve. Argue with your sister

with such intensity she is moved

to leave a message on your answering machine,

how she couldn’t sleep last night: a wrangle

about history and pioneers and Indians,

the Indian Act and racism and loss.

Argue from the passenger seat of her parked car,

so ferociously you can’t quite separate

one issue from the other, or

even remember what your position is. Fathom

your frustration. Negotiate

an awkward amnesty two nights later

in a telephone conversation,

but contemplate your confusion

as a monk might meditate on meaning.

Once you find

your way back to a quest choked

with bus fumes, stinging nettles, and inarticulateness,

ruminate on your lack of fluency:

namôya nipakaski-nêhiyawân.

Embark on this pilgrimage in the midst

of your father’s passing. Start

a poem for your father, two weeks after he dies,

and title it tawâw, but leave it

for a year because it’s just too hard to write.

Tell Cree people why you,

a môniyâskwêw,

try to write poetry in Cree and English. Tell

them in nêhiyawêwin as they lean

toward your crude Cree, trying

to understand, trying to give you some of their loss.

Speak these words, over and over, rehearsing them until you know you sound fluent:

ninôhtê-nêhiyawân ayisk ê-kî-pakaskît nohtâwîpan. ayîki-sâkahikanihk

ohci wiya mâka môya ê-kî-nêhiyâwit, kî-môniyâwiw.

êkwa mîna ê-âpihtawikosisâniskwêwit nikâwiy.

Say these words because they’re the most important. Consider

your mother’s experience, because she’s old enough to want

not to talk about being Métis. Study

the boundaries of the Métis National Council and then

don’t worry about them because they’re just like

four first-place ribbons at a local track meet. Stop

short of immersing yourself in a Cree community, the most

effective means of achieving fluency.

Learn about Cree syllabics:

Become so literate

you can teach them and maybe even

Standard Roman Orthography,

but don’t expect fluency in a classroom.

When you write that word —

cahkipêhikanak,

doubt your tongue and consult your grammar

guide yet again just to make sure

you got the plural suffix right. Now quit

doubting yourself because your tongue remembers.

Take on transcribing and transliterating

a Catholic prayer book — written entirely

in Cree syllabics — that takes

only God knows how long to complete,

agreeing to translate the last fifty pages:

hand-numbing, elbow-aching, mind-worrying,

tongue-stuttering work as you labour over the words

in their strange Oblate orthography. Trust

only Dorothy, awa iskwêw ê-miyo-otôtêmimisk êkwa ê-pakaskît,

and Jean and Arok from Saskatchewan

to verify your work.

Discover that you’re a visual learner,

not aural. Then read everything written

about language and culture and with a certain innocence

partake in Indian identity and language politics

always brooding over Cree poetics.

Take so many Cree classes you lose count. But

kiskinohamâkosi tânisi ka-isi-nêhiyaw-akihcikêyan:

pêyak, nîso, nisto . . .

You cannot circumvent this unbeaten path, cannot skirt

the boulders and roots and loneliness of this mission.

But remember pen and paper anyway:

you’ll need them each time you learn a new Cree word.

Then throw away your writing materials: wêpina,

or stuff them so far down into your grizzled,

arthritic backpack they’ll be too deep to dig out.

Now listen.

nitohta êkwa.

Listen hard.

nâkatohkê.

Listen to these Cree words, these beautiful Cree words:

nitohta ôhi nêhiyaw itwêwina, ôhi kâ-katawasisiki nêhiyaw itwêwina.

Maybe then you’ll become not so much

a fluent Cree speaker but

a fluent Cree listener.

But hurry! You haven’t much time.

mâka kakwêyâho! môya kitawipayihikon.