ISBN:
9781772013795
Pages: 224 pp
Pub. Date:
March 9 2022
Dimensions: 9" x 6" x 0.6875"
Rights: Available: WORLD
Categories
Poetry / POE011010
- POETRY / Canadian
- POETRY / Subjects & Themes / Death, Grief, Loss
- POETRY / Women Authors
- POETRY / Indigenous Peoples of Turtle Island
Standing in a River of Time merges poetry and lyrical memoir on a journey exposing the intergenerational effects of colonization on a Métis family. Kirton does not shy away from hard realities, meeting them head on, but always treating them with respect and the love stemming from a lifetime of spiritual healing and decades of sobriety. This collection unravels painful memories and a mixed-blood woman’s journey towards wholeness. The Ancestors whisper to Kirton throughout, asking her to heal, to bring them home, so that within these stories of redemption and loss the dead walk with us, their presence felt as the story unfurls in unexpected ways. Kirton does not offer false hope, nor does she push us towards answers we are not yet ready for. Instead, she gestures towards the many healing modalities she has explored as she discovers that the path to reconciliation is not only a long and winding road, but also that it begins with those closest to us.
"Kirton travels backward and forward in her life, weaving poetry and lyric prose into a formally taut, spiritually expansive memoir of trauma, loss and survival.” – Winnipeg Free Press
“Standing in a River of Time is not interested in standing alone — it is Kirton’s recognition of her abundant relations, and an invitation to the reader to engage with her. The events, emotions, and stories of these pages make up the messy landscape of what it looks like to hold and heal.”
Jasmine Gui, Canthius
By Jónína Kirton
Jónína Kirton, a Red River Métis/Icelandic poet, author, and facilitator, was born in Portage la Prairie, Manitoba (Treaty One). She currently lives in the unceded territory of the Musqueam, Sḵwxwú7mesh, and Tsleil-Waututh. Kirton graduated from the Simon Fraser University’s Writer’s Studio in 2007 where she now teaches a workshop titled Pen & Sword. She is a longstanding member of their Advisory Board. A late-blooming poet, she was sixty-one when she received the 2016 Vancouver’s Mayor’s Arts Award for an Emerging Artist in the Literary Arts category.
