news | Monday February 3, 2025

Hot Off the Press! Uiesh / Somewhere by Joséphine Bacon and Translated by Jessica Moore Has Landed!

We are so pleased to announce that Uiesh / Somewhere, winner of the Prix des libraires, the 2019 Indigenous Voices Award for French Prose, the Prix littéraire des enseignant.e.s de Français, and the Coup de Cœur Renaud-Bray, and finalist for the Prix Alain-Grandbois, is now available for English language readers! Written by phenomenal Innu poet Joséphine Bacon and translated by Jessica Moore, Uiesh / Somewhere is a dual-language collection, with all poems appearing in both Innu-aimun and English.

An excerpt from Uiesh / Somewhere:

“I have a hundred words to tell you
the story of my old age
my wrinkles

Gone, my lightness of foot

Short of breath now
but in my dreaming I walk on
tireless

I know how to hear the leaves
I learn the world
my age grows old with me

I haven’t got a hundred words
I haven’t lived a hundred years”

The poems in Uiesh / Somewhere are rooted in Innu Elder Joséphine Bacon’s experiences of moving between the nomadic ways of her Ancestors in the northern wilderness of Nitassinan and the clamour of the city. Wherever she is, Bacon is attentive to the smallest details of her environment, from the moon and the stars, the Northern Lights, and the falling snow, to the sirens of fire engines and the noise of a busy bar night. Pick up your copy of Uiesh / Somewhere here.