GORE BAY—On the afternoon of Sophie Anne Edwards’ launch of her debut book of poetry, ‘Conversations with the Kagawong River,’ on November 30, the weather outside was frightful as heavy snow and squalls threatened to scupper the whole enterprise.
But inside the Split Rail Brewery’s high-ceilinged events room on the waterfront in Gore Bay, all was cozy and warm as people slowly filled the benches around the picnic tables facing an improvised stage. Singer-songwriter Natalie Edward’s crystalline voice soothed away any thoughts of impending storms as the audience settled in with Split Rail’s beers and sodas and a tableful of snacks.
Sophie Edwards lives in Kagawong and is well-known on Manitoulin Island as the co-founder of 4elements Living Arts; she acted as 4e’s founding artistic/executive director from 2003-2018, leading the multidisciplinary, cross-cultural, non-profit arts organization in activities “to investigate and integrate relationships between landscape, creativity, and community,” including the annual Elemental Festival.
A widely published poet, workshop facilitator and geographer (a PhD candidate at Queen’s University), Sophie describes herself as “an environmental artist, geopoet and curator who engages with the complexities of local ecosystems (social, cultural, historical, colonial, environmental) through field- and installation-based practice.”
Among the numerous projects Sophie designed and curated with 4elements, one of the best known is the Billings Connections Trail, opened in 2017, a response, she has said, to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s acknowledgement of the role of art and artists in imagining new relations in the process of reconciliation. The Connections Trail, made up of seven jury-selected sculptures and three carved granite boulders along the Kagawong River and in the village of Kagawong and the township of Billings are described on historical plaques in English, French and Anishinaabemowin. The Trail won an Ontario Lieutenant Governor’s Award for cultural landscape heritage preservation.
All of which explains the keenness with which Sophie Edwards’ debut collection of visual and text-based poetry, ‘Conversations with the Kagawong River,’ had been awaited. Published by Talonbooks, the beautifully designed and illustrated 222-page soft cover book was recommended by CBC as a ‘must read’ and made both CBC’s and Quill & Quire’s most anticipated fall poetry lists.
On the inside cover, we learn the Anishinaabemowin words for the Kagawong River: Gaagigewang Ziibi, followed by enlightening statements by historian and language advocate Dr. Alan Ojiig Corbiere, M’Chigeeng CAO/Band Manager Art Jacko, and Ojibwe Elder from Wiikwemkoong Unceded Territory, Josh Eshkawkogan. Dr Corbiere applauds Sophie Edwards’ work to observe, listen, document and interact with Gaagigewang Ziibi over two years, “finding ways to integrate historical truths and challenging dominant relations through a creative approach.”
Sophie lays out her creative intentions at the beginning: “I want to hear the River, expand the definitions of subject, text, author and listener. To attempt to listen on the River’s terms.” Her tone of awe and deep respect towards a body of water and all forms of animate and inanimate life that she encounters on her artistic journey permeates all aspects of the book.
There is a biotic world that exists
beyond me
is not available for me
to understand
I wade in, anyway,
knowing that learning a new language
the many languages of the River,
the creatures, plants, and trees
that live together there
is an opening gesture, a greeting, a need for time
a lifetime.
Throughout the book, Sophie blends her poetry with Treaty directives and clauses, notes of the clergy and of various Superintendants of Indian Affairs of the day, lists of grievances and petitions to the Indian Agent (as these government functionaries were called), remembrances of famed local farmer Ed Burt – himself an author of two gardening books, historical photographs, maps, words with their Anishinaabemowin meanings and her conceptual art.
As Sophie took the stage, she admitted to “feeling emotional” and to “choking up” on the culmination of several years of effort in the production of ‘Conversations with the Kagawong River.’ “I always wanted to write. It took me until age 50 to do it. There is time to write, people!” she laughed. “Coming to writing after so long, I finally allowed myself the space.”
As she read, images from her book were projected in a continuous stream onto a large screen beside her. The reading became a visual performance – scenes of the River with Sophie’s scattered letters and texts floating, sinking, disintegrating; the artist underwater; paddling through lily pads and cattails; tracing on bark; we experience what she saw and heard along the River’s edge, we feel the water as at one point she dove in, we consider her artistic responses to the River’s calls, we feel the icy cold, the heat of summer as her words and images resonate through the stillness of the room, like a meditation.
“It takes time to understand land, water, animals as beings,” says the artist. “That time is my spiritual connection.”
‘Conversations with the Kagawong River’ by Sophie Anne Edwards is available at the Expositor bookstore in Little Current and from many online and physical bookstores.
by Isobel Harry
