The Open Issue

In this issue, readers will find three feature interviews. The first is with Indigenous poet, arts journalist, activist and host of CBC’s popular broadcast program, Unreserved, Rosanna Deerchild. Rosanna talks with Sharanpal Ruprai — poet, editor and assistant professor of Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of Winnipeg — about mothers, reconciliation and the legacy of residential schools. Rosanna’s acclaimed collection of poetry, calling down the sky (Bookland Press, 2015), has recently been translated and released in Cree. Co-written with her mother, calling down the sky relates Rosanna’s mother’s experience of residential school and the resonating impact of that experience for her personally, for Rosanna, her family and for so many Indigenous people and their families in this country.

The second conversation featured in this issue is Red Rising Magazine collective member Sadie-Phoenix Lavoie and two of the magazine’s contributing poets, Jacq Pelland and Jordyn Pepin, in discussion with CV2’s former student intern, Perry Reimer. Beautiful, bold and all kinds of savvy, Red Rising is one of Winnipeg’s and Canada’s newest literary ventures, with its magazine, website and social media presence dedicated to supporting and promoting Indigenous writing, poetry, journalism, art and action, especially to a younger audience.

Our third interview features an in-depth conversation with poet Mallory Tater about, as interviewer Hannah Green puts it, the “gritty and raw” approach to femininity in her soon to be released first poetry collection, This Will Be Good, from BookThug. They also talk about Mallory’s new blog feature, Glamato: Stiff Drinks and Strong Women and her new Vancouver-based chapbook venture, Rahila’s Ghost Press.

In addition to selected Cree translations of poems from calling down the sky and work from Mallory Tater’s forthcoming new collection, readers will also find a review of calling down the sky by Di Brandt and new work from poets Kate Cayley, Kristian Enright, and much more.