"The Salmon Shanties : A Cascadian Song Cycle" by Harold Rhenish

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When

Mar 10, 2025 from 06:00 PM to 07:00 PM

Where

Village Books readings gallery, Bellingham

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A Nature of Writing speaker series event, in partnership with Village Books

A collection of shanties (songs) laid out in couplets that move between English and Chinook Wawa, The Salmon Shanties celebrates a poetic tradition deeply rooted on the West Coast. Harold Rhenisch explores memories of people, place, and of returning home, speaking the land’s names as a music of its own and creating a series of aural maps. Imbued with rhythms of Secwepemc grass dances, the colloquial chatter of the Canadian poet Al Purdy, and the voice of poet and historian Charles Lillard, Rhenisch’s work sings of roots to the land lifted up by the sea into the sky—as if Ezra Pound had sung of Cascadia instead of Europe.

Do not be in Mareuil and Périgeux tonight; it is 1912 no longer.
We, the land’s singers, are walking the star road on the long way home
with the crickets of a July evening above Tuc el Nuit,
the burrowing owls of N’kmp,
and the long memories of the dwarf shrews of Nighthawk.
Breath cannot be denied. Poh cannot be forsaken. Ezra, shantie.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Harold Rhenisch has published 33 books of poetry, fiction, memoir, translation, criticism and nonfiction since 1981. He has twice won both the CBC Prize and the Malahat Review Long Poem Prize and received the George Ryga Prize for Social Responsibility in Literature.

ABOUT OUR BOOKSELLER PARTNER
Village Books and Paper Dreams is a community-based, independent bookstore and gift shop located in the Historic Fairhaven Village on the southside of Bellingham. Since 1980, we have been "building community one book at a time." Village Books is a place to meet your friends, talk books, or just while away an hour or two among our shelves. Years of experience with local customers and knowledge of local interests helps us carefully select the books you love. Thanks to you, Village Books is able to continue keeping local readers in mind. If you're in the neighborhood come on in to explore!