Haida Book of Stories Front Cover

Paperback / softback
ISBN: 9781772015553
Pages: 120
Pub. Date: March 9 2026
Dimensions: 8.5" x 5.5" x 0.5625"
Rights: Available: WORLD
Categories
Poetry / POE011010

  • POETRY / Indigenous Peoples of Turtle Island

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Haida Book of Stories

By Clarence Mills

For the past four decades, world-renowned Haida artist Clarence Mills (Ḵ’aak’insk’us) has been creating artwork in the cultural tradition and style of his people, including a totem displayed at Expo 86 in Vancouver. He made history as the first Haida artist whose work was shown at the Louvre, and is presently carver-in-residence on Vancouver’s Granville Island. Haida Book of Stories is a stunningly powerful poetic attempt to carve out the artist’s aesthetic evolution.

The artist’s statement: “This book is about a boy that wanted to find something inside, things from being born half-and-half on Haida Gwaii. Its passages depict the art within through years of focus inside, outside, on myself. Finding art at a young age through creating made something from nothing, got somewhere by creating: Argillite, Cedar, Paper, Glass. The discovery that being quiet, calm, and in Mom’s basement invented a style, a person, an artist.”

I feel
Like I have been A tiny drop of water
That started a puddle That overflowed
To form a stream Then a river
That eventually empties Into the ocean
To become free

—Clarence Mills (Ḵ’aak’insk’us), November 2022