My Heart is a Stray Bullet
2nd Edition
"Damm's cries for belonging seem to touch chords for all humankind in the late 20th century." The Ottawa Citizen
ISBN: 9780969712091(paper)
ISBN: 096971209X
$14.95
Fiction
Reader Reviews
This is an engaging selection of work by Kateri Akiwenzie-Damm, a
writer of mixed-heritage from Cape Crocker Reserve. Bringing together
work produced between 1987 and 1992, the volume was first published
in 1993. Its republication is richly warranted. Her work serves as an inoculation
against a reading environment which now reserves only its
remote corners for poetry. The restructuring of a commodified reading
culture, however, requires that such work as Akiwenzie-Damm's be read.
The immediacy of her access to memory and feeling, intimacy and lyricism,
the ingenuity with which sensual and metrical properties are designed
and related, sum up poetry that is powerful and confident. While
her work clusters about the historically precedented, permanent, and
inexhaustible issues of identity and purpose, Akiwenzie-Damm brings
wonderful clarity and courage, not to speak of the unique perspective of
a Canadian Indigenous person, to a very old discourse.
Writing poetry that holds the value of immediacy as fundamental
runs the risk of obscuring the line between experience and art. While
Akiwenzie-Damm hovers close to this virtually unseeable line on occasion,
her work always succeeds in speaking powerfully and coherently.
A fine accomplishment by one of Canada's most gifted young poets.
Alfred Fisher
Queen's University
Kingston, Ontario
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