Sôhkêyihta: The Poetry of Sky Dancer Louise Bernice Halfe

by Louise Bernice Halfe

Since 1990, Louise Bernice Halfe’s work has stood out as essential testimony to Indigenous experiences within the ongoing history of colonialism and the resilience of Indigenous storytellers. Sohkeyihta includes searing poems, written across the expanse of Halfe’s career, aimed at helping readers move forward from the darkness into a place of healing.

Genres: Poetry, Indigenous

88 pages, Paperback

Published May 25, 2018

About the author

Louise Halfe is known in Cree as Sky Dancer. She was born on the Saddle Lake First Nation reserve in Alberta in 1953. At the age of seven, she was sent away to Blue Quills Residential School in St. Paul, Alberta. She left home of her own accord when she was sixteen, breaking ties with her family and completing her studies at St. Paul's regional high school. It was at this time that she began writing a journal about her experiences.

Halfe's first book of poetry, Bear Bones and Feathers, won the Milton Acorn People's Poet award, and was a finalist for the Spirit of Saskatchewan Award, the Pat Lowther Award and the Gerald Lampert Award.

Her second book, Blue Marrow was short-listed for the Governor General Award as well as the Book of the Year Award, Saskatoon Book Award, and Poetry Award.

Her work has appeared in various anthologies and magazines, and she has been on Peter Gzowski's Morningside, CBC's The Arts Tonight and Ambience. Halfe has travelled extensively across Canada and abroad doing readings and presentations of her work and conducting writing workshops.

She has a Bachelor or Social Work from the University of Regina and certificates in addictions counseling from the Neechi Institute. Halfe lives in Saskatoon.

Reviews

[Yaaresse · Rating 4 out of 5]

Powerful poetry from (Canadian) Cree poet Louise Bernice Halfe.

It's difficult subject matter, about the dark history of systemic attempts to erase the culture and language of the First Nations' peoples. Colonialism, racism, the brutality of mission schools, the hypocrisy of missionaries and priests who ran those schools - it's all in there. Somehow, Halfe manages to tell all those dark stories and still infuse them with the strength of healing and show the bedrock foundations of her culture's connections to the land, the past, and each other.

[Jodi Hackmess · Rating 5 out of 5]

Louise Bernice Halfe is so iconic for her poem of the pope, but calling the pope “poop.”
Louise Halfe’s is my favourite writer because she has such a distinct vivid voice, and her written pieces are delightfully challenging both in content and in technique. Challenging in the way it’ll stick with you and can be interpreted in many ways over time.

(Also, I read this book in freshman year of uni. I saw my old annotations from back then on the pages and it made me nostalgic lol)

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

although i found these poems felt very fragmented and difficult to follow I love hearing the voices and stories that seem all but lost which have been given voice. These poems felt like so many things - like walking through the ruins of a house and hearing the voices of those who had lived there and feeling their touch on all the things and places which now lie broken and at times unrecognizable - yet still so present and real.

[Brent · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sohkeyihta is a moving collection of poetry published over the course of Halfe's career. It evokes the comfort of an indigenous home, the unnerving nature of the residential schools, the desire to move forward from the pain, and the inability to go back now that things have come so far. It perfectly captures the spirit of reconciliation as I understand it: the poems push forth a desire to heal while recognizing how atrocious the treatment of indigenous people was, but Halfe explicitly does not want to go back to the way things were. She has a family now, she lives in a house, she speaks English, she grew up as a Catholic. These things can't just be taken out of her as if they never happened, yet she still seeks to reconcile the horrific things done to her - and others like her - with how she is today.

Reconciliation isn't just a lump sum payment, or a bunch of land in the prairies, or clean water for a remote community. These are all important issues, reconciliation is a more personal issue than that. It's about resolving an upheaval and eradication of your ancestral culture with the world Indigenous people are forced to live in today - a world that tried to destroy them not long ago. At least, that's what I took from this.

[Michelle Boyer · Rating 4 out of 5]

PopSugar 2024 reading challenge #30

I typically avoid poetry because it is just so, so subjective. But I absolutely loved this collection of poetry -- as is true for most collections, some of these poems were easy to understand. Others required a lot more intensive reflection. Either way, I immensely enjoyed and took tons of notes!