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Approaching Fire
***THE MIRAMICHI READER'S 2020 MOST PROMISING AUTHOR AWARD***
***BMO WINTERSET AWARD LONGLIST*
In Approaching Fire, Michelle Porter embarks on a quest to find her great-grandfather, the Métis fiddler and performer Leon Robert Goulet. Through musicology, jigs and reels, poetry, photographs, and the ecology of fire, Porter invests biography with the power of reflective ingenuity, creating a portrait which expands beyond documentation into a private realm where truth meets metaphor.
Weaving through multiple genres and traditions, Approaching Fire fashions a textual documentary of rescue and insight, and a glowing contemplation of the ways in which loss can generate unbridled renewal.
***BMO WINTERSET AWARD LONGLIST*
In Approaching Fire, Michelle Porter embarks on a quest to find her great-grandfather, the Métis fiddler and performer Leon Robert Goulet. Through musicology, jigs and reels, poetry, photographs, and the ecology of fire, Porter invests biography with the power of reflective ingenuity, creating a portrait which expands beyond documentation into a private realm where truth meets metaphor.
Weaving through multiple genres and traditions, Approaching Fire fashions a textual documentary of rescue and insight, and a glowing contemplation of the ways in which loss can generate unbridled renewal.
192 pages, Paperback
Published October 14, 2020
90 people want to read
About the author
Michelle Porter
27 books116 followersMICHELLE PORTER is the descendent of a long line of Métis storytellers. Many of her ancestors told stories using music and today she tells stories using the written word. She holds degrees in Journalism, Folklore, English, and a PhD in Geography. Her academic research and creative work focus on home, memory, and women’s changing relationships with the land.
Her book A Grandmother Begins the Story: A Novel will be published November 7, 2023.
Her most recent book, Scratching River, a memoir exploring the meaning of her Métis heritage through her older brother’s life story, was published by Wilfrid Laurier Press in April 2022. She’s also published a book of creative nonfiction about her great-grandfather, a fiddler from the Red River, called Approaching Fire (shortlisted for the Indigenous Voices Award 2021) and a book of poetry, Inquiries, (shortlisted for the Pat Lowther Memorial Award). Michelle has won numerous awards for her poetry and journalism and her work has been published in literary journals and magazines across the country. Currently she is teaching creative writing and Métis Literature at Memorial University. She is a member of the Manitoba Métis Federation and she lives in St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador.
Her book A Grandmother Begins the Story: A Novel will be published November 7, 2023.
Her most recent book, Scratching River, a memoir exploring the meaning of her Métis heritage through her older brother’s life story, was published by Wilfrid Laurier Press in April 2022. She’s also published a book of creative nonfiction about her great-grandfather, a fiddler from the Red River, called Approaching Fire (shortlisted for the Indigenous Voices Award 2021) and a book of poetry, Inquiries, (shortlisted for the Pat Lowther Memorial Award). Michelle has won numerous awards for her poetry and journalism and her work has been published in literary journals and magazines across the country. Currently she is teaching creative writing and Métis Literature at Memorial University. She is a member of the Manitoba Métis Federation and she lives in St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador.
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
May 9, 2021
I usually begin two books at the same time to see which one gets me to keep going. I started Jonny Appleseed at the same time as this one so....
I think the format of the book is interesting and even her connection to Métis identity through famous fiddler Bob Goulet - recognized by most as Métis.
I did wonder about her g-g-gpa (I think) maybe earlier, but - she didn’t much talk about his role teaching at the Indian residential school - I wished she had talked about what she felt about that.
I appreciated all the history embedded in every page. As for the poetry and prose - I would recommend reading those on a chill 420 day - makes things easier to skim by but also flows better at the same time.
It’s a true ⭐️⭐️⭐️
I think the format of the book is interesting and even her connection to Métis identity through famous fiddler Bob Goulet - recognized by most as Métis.
I did wonder about her g-g-gpa (I think) maybe earlier, but - she didn’t much talk about his role teaching at the Indian residential school - I wished she had talked about what she felt about that.
I appreciated all the history embedded in every page. As for the poetry and prose - I would recommend reading those on a chill 420 day - makes things easier to skim by but also flows better at the same time.
It’s a true ⭐️⭐️⭐️
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
April 30, 2021
A genre bending exploration of the author's great grandfather, a well-known Métis fiddler. Using stories from within her family, recordings of the songs of the time, newspaper clippings and combining these with her poetry and imagined letters to her Pépé, she brings Robert Leon Goulet to life.
August 30, 2022
This man we’d heard so much about
made of sound and soul
this man we’d never met
made the music of our childhood.
This is what a memoir should be. I preferred the poems, but the narratives were excellent also, light, airy prose that had minimal adjectives, just let words be what they were, interspersed with clippings from newspapers and ticket stubs and concert posters. The racism and colonialism are clear, and the family secrets are not, but the author hints at them. This is not the way that we normally want our books to be, we want structure, clear pacing, climax, resolution. I love when we can break free from that, and I imagine it is her indigenous roots that help with this.
There is so much I do not know about my family history, so that fact that she knows some is amazing, but still, she feels her great grandfather is lost to her in so many ways, still. Some things remain hidden, and it is so hard to live in that unknown. Reading books like this light a little path, bring a little sweet flavor to the questing many of us do to know life, land, people deeply. Fascinating, beautiful read.
I’m not really expecting a voice from the spirit world. But you could answer in the bits and pieces of history that I uncover and weave together here. There is this, too: If I learn to listen in the way that this story needs, you’ll keep answering after this book is published. This story we are telling will never be finished and it will be told again and again with beginnings and endings that shift, that change shape.
***
Seems like the world’s on fire, like
the world is just burning itself up.
music can leap through generations
like fire leaps a road, can’t it?
Make itself heard in the cellular activity
of the body of the woman who is standing
in her mother’s cousin’s kitchen near Mission
the year British Colombia declared a state of emergency.
It’s because of all the burning
that didn’t happen before and
because of all the fires
that were suppressed-
this music will be felt in the body
of the woman in her kitchen
in her own house
in newfoundland and Labrador
for years after.
The smoke from those fires travelled.
filled the skies from the West Coast
to Saskatchewan, and even further east, they say.
When British Colombia burned, smoke made twilight
out of day. In the pictures I saw, I thought
how it could have been fog.
***
It’s what people pushed to the margins have always done, found life and continuity in their stories. Denied a land base of our own, you built a relationship to the stories you lived by and you gave that to your daughters, who gave that to my mother and her sisters, and they have given it to all of us. The stories of the Métis nation are the core of its identity.
***
You don’t need a lot of books where you are, do you? All your questions have been answered. that is such an alien idea to me, a person who is so often weighted with uncertainty and with doubt. To have all your questions answered, even the ones you didn’t know enough to ask, what does such an existence feel like, Pépé? I imagine a lightness, as if a wing had been rooted beside each scapula, into the dense site where the muscles attach. We need the books to be written, they are critical, and we all need the traditional Metis music to stay with us here to answer questions we didn’t even know need answering.
Your music, you would tell me if you were here, is a muscle. We all of us need it here in this living world, so please don’t take it with you. Let me keep some of it to share.
***
Take a Turn, Summer 1867:
if the house
had a wood floor if the house had
it would be creaking
steady with the rhythm
creaking if the house
had a wood floor if the house had
creaking with the rhythm
of dancing feet if there was no floor
bare ground stamping moccasins
bare ground the way it was
with the winter houses
if there was no floor the bare ground
the way it was most places
dust rose with rhythm
bow and sash heel and toe
dust rose and everyone
takes a turn going out
open the door take a turn walking
out with the air
evening air dust
have you see it rise?
***
Parts of the Needle, Manitoba, Canada 1820:
The eye
carries the thread and the point penetrates the
material,
either parting the threads or cutting a hole in the
fabric.
The sewing machine needle, hardened,
chrome-plated steel
shank, shoulder, shaft, groove, scarf, eye, point.
The Red River, she threads generously across
the land, offering
each narrow lot a fertile shoulder, a well-fed
cheek, a soft curve of soil.
…
On the back of the shaft is a cut called the
groove, or provisional government.
The groove releases the thread into a loop so
that the shuttle picks up the thread.
The scarf, also known as the Manitoba Act, provides
room for the shuttle
to pass close by. there are different kinds of
needles: universal, embroidery,
stretch, ballpoint, denim, wing, leather, metallic,
quilting, serger, top stitching, twin..
The eye of the needle carries the thread
and the point penetrates
the material, either parting the threads or cutting a
hole in the fabric.
***
A crooked tune uses asymmetrical phrase structures.
A tune is supposed to have a regular rhythm,
so that it’s predictable.
so everyone can play the same song, more or less.
Métis crooked tunes add and drop one or two beats
in random places, whenever.
Improvised on the spot.
The rhythm chances
every time
there’s
no predicting.
Each player has their own
way. Pretty hard to accompany.
Old time Métis fiddlers play crooked tunes
when they are performing solo, mostly.
***
Some say the Métis
live between
two worlds
life lived like a suspension bridge
rattling in the wind
reaching for one side and for the other
That doesn’t describe what I know
about my great-grandfather
or my grandmother
or my mother myself
that’s the story about Métis
that was convenient
for stealing the land.
***
Play a tune so it belongs
to you and to the song at once
just like its lost and following
new ways and old let it get lost then follow it
let it go play your tune just a little
outside the other let it
get lost follow the old tune and put yours
alongside it play it like it’s lost
and the next time play on the side
of the song and higher
don’t repeat are you lost?
let it get lost send it
in a different direction
every time play it like it’s lost.
***
Stories are harder to lose
than a flute they can hang
about us in our skin
genetic memory
DNA, the way we
reach backward and forward
just so we can stand here
on this land still.
And isn’t a man just a story?
The Bob Goulet I was
raised with is an idea
and not just one,
but a braiding river of stories
the streams of his many selves
splitting apart and coming together
across his homeland and moving away.
Which stories would he
have me tell?
And what is the story
I am making beside his
alongside his music
as if I too am lost?
***
There was so much
space back then and
the prairies remember
the way the tunes travelled
from one dance to the next,
from west to east and back again.
The land still holds all the version
the players created on here
on my computer I have
a file that holds all the
scratchy digital recordings
left that remember
my great-grandfather’s playing.
The trails always go both ways-
it doesn’t matter which way
you choose to walk them.
made of sound and soul
this man we’d never met
made the music of our childhood.
This is what a memoir should be. I preferred the poems, but the narratives were excellent also, light, airy prose that had minimal adjectives, just let words be what they were, interspersed with clippings from newspapers and ticket stubs and concert posters. The racism and colonialism are clear, and the family secrets are not, but the author hints at them. This is not the way that we normally want our books to be, we want structure, clear pacing, climax, resolution. I love when we can break free from that, and I imagine it is her indigenous roots that help with this.
There is so much I do not know about my family history, so that fact that she knows some is amazing, but still, she feels her great grandfather is lost to her in so many ways, still. Some things remain hidden, and it is so hard to live in that unknown. Reading books like this light a little path, bring a little sweet flavor to the questing many of us do to know life, land, people deeply. Fascinating, beautiful read.
I’m not really expecting a voice from the spirit world. But you could answer in the bits and pieces of history that I uncover and weave together here. There is this, too: If I learn to listen in the way that this story needs, you’ll keep answering after this book is published. This story we are telling will never be finished and it will be told again and again with beginnings and endings that shift, that change shape.
***
Seems like the world’s on fire, like
the world is just burning itself up.
music can leap through generations
like fire leaps a road, can’t it?
Make itself heard in the cellular activity
of the body of the woman who is standing
in her mother’s cousin’s kitchen near Mission
the year British Colombia declared a state of emergency.
It’s because of all the burning
that didn’t happen before and
because of all the fires
that were suppressed-
this music will be felt in the body
of the woman in her kitchen
in her own house
in newfoundland and Labrador
for years after.
The smoke from those fires travelled.
filled the skies from the West Coast
to Saskatchewan, and even further east, they say.
When British Colombia burned, smoke made twilight
out of day. In the pictures I saw, I thought
how it could have been fog.
***
It’s what people pushed to the margins have always done, found life and continuity in their stories. Denied a land base of our own, you built a relationship to the stories you lived by and you gave that to your daughters, who gave that to my mother and her sisters, and they have given it to all of us. The stories of the Métis nation are the core of its identity.
***
You don’t need a lot of books where you are, do you? All your questions have been answered. that is such an alien idea to me, a person who is so often weighted with uncertainty and with doubt. To have all your questions answered, even the ones you didn’t know enough to ask, what does such an existence feel like, Pépé? I imagine a lightness, as if a wing had been rooted beside each scapula, into the dense site where the muscles attach. We need the books to be written, they are critical, and we all need the traditional Metis music to stay with us here to answer questions we didn’t even know need answering.
Your music, you would tell me if you were here, is a muscle. We all of us need it here in this living world, so please don’t take it with you. Let me keep some of it to share.
***
Take a Turn, Summer 1867:
if the house
had a wood floor if the house had
it would be creaking
steady with the rhythm
creaking if the house
had a wood floor if the house had
creaking with the rhythm
of dancing feet if there was no floor
bare ground stamping moccasins
bare ground the way it was
with the winter houses
if there was no floor the bare ground
the way it was most places
dust rose with rhythm
bow and sash heel and toe
dust rose and everyone
takes a turn going out
open the door take a turn walking
out with the air
evening air dust
have you see it rise?
***
Parts of the Needle, Manitoba, Canada 1820:
The eye
carries the thread and the point penetrates the
material,
either parting the threads or cutting a hole in the
fabric.
The sewing machine needle, hardened,
chrome-plated steel
shank, shoulder, shaft, groove, scarf, eye, point.
The Red River, she threads generously across
the land, offering
each narrow lot a fertile shoulder, a well-fed
cheek, a soft curve of soil.
…
On the back of the shaft is a cut called the
groove, or provisional government.
The groove releases the thread into a loop so
that the shuttle picks up the thread.
The scarf, also known as the Manitoba Act, provides
room for the shuttle
to pass close by. there are different kinds of
needles: universal, embroidery,
stretch, ballpoint, denim, wing, leather, metallic,
quilting, serger, top stitching, twin..
The eye of the needle carries the thread
and the point penetrates
the material, either parting the threads or cutting a
hole in the fabric.
***
A crooked tune uses asymmetrical phrase structures.
A tune is supposed to have a regular rhythm,
so that it’s predictable.
so everyone can play the same song, more or less.
Métis crooked tunes add and drop one or two beats
in random places, whenever.
Improvised on the spot.
The rhythm chances
every time
there’s
no predicting.
Each player has their own
way. Pretty hard to accompany.
Old time Métis fiddlers play crooked tunes
when they are performing solo, mostly.
***
Some say the Métis
live between
two worlds
life lived like a suspension bridge
rattling in the wind
reaching for one side and for the other
That doesn’t describe what I know
about my great-grandfather
or my grandmother
or my mother myself
that’s the story about Métis
that was convenient
for stealing the land.
***
Play a tune so it belongs
to you and to the song at once
just like its lost and following
new ways and old let it get lost then follow it
let it go play your tune just a little
outside the other let it
get lost follow the old tune and put yours
alongside it play it like it’s lost
and the next time play on the side
of the song and higher
don’t repeat are you lost?
let it get lost send it
in a different direction
every time play it like it’s lost.
***
Stories are harder to lose
than a flute they can hang
about us in our skin
genetic memory
DNA, the way we
reach backward and forward
just so we can stand here
on this land still.
And isn’t a man just a story?
The Bob Goulet I was
raised with is an idea
and not just one,
but a braiding river of stories
the streams of his many selves
splitting apart and coming together
across his homeland and moving away.
Which stories would he
have me tell?
And what is the story
I am making beside his
alongside his music
as if I too am lost?
***
There was so much
space back then and
the prairies remember
the way the tunes travelled
from one dance to the next,
from west to east and back again.
The land still holds all the version
the players created on here
on my computer I have
a file that holds all the
scratchy digital recordings
left that remember
my great-grandfather’s playing.
The trails always go both ways-
it doesn’t matter which way
you choose to walk them.
July 12, 2021
"Travel back West. Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, British Columbia, searching for the Red River trails, for the echoes left by family, wanting to touch my mother stories, holding them in my hand, like an old-time fiddler handling a traditional Métis song. I want to create a variation that will be my own."~pg.51
•
"When a child's ancestral history includes certain kinds of events, some people use the term intergenerational trauma. It isn't uncommon for these children to be adults when the material they are carrying around starts smouldering. These colonial-based emotional fires are suppressed and passed down until the conditions are perfect for an incredible, awe-inspiring inferno. By this time, there's no way around it. You can only go through it."~pg.85
•
🌿
Thoughts ~
I was originally drawn to this book because of how much I enjoyed Porter's poetry collection, Inquiries. Then I let this sit on my shelf for far too long. But I ended up reading it last month and really enjoyed it!
Porter's writing is beautiful and deep as she explores her ancestry, digging into the life of her great grandfather Métis fiddler and performer Leon Robert Goulet. This was a facinating biography! The way she writes so openly, yearning to connect with her kin was very soulful and riviting. Porter lets us glimps into the past, offers a portrait of what life was like then. The importance and tradition of music being taught and carried through the generations of their family, but also the realities of colonialism.
This was so well written and structured. I loved the way she combined poetry, photographs, newspaper articles, oral histories, music and fire ecology to unfold this journey. It's truly a work of art.
Thank You @breakwaterbooks for sending me this book opinions are my own.
•
"When a child's ancestral history includes certain kinds of events, some people use the term intergenerational trauma. It isn't uncommon for these children to be adults when the material they are carrying around starts smouldering. These colonial-based emotional fires are suppressed and passed down until the conditions are perfect for an incredible, awe-inspiring inferno. By this time, there's no way around it. You can only go through it."~pg.85
•
🌿
Thoughts ~
I was originally drawn to this book because of how much I enjoyed Porter's poetry collection, Inquiries. Then I let this sit on my shelf for far too long. But I ended up reading it last month and really enjoyed it!
Porter's writing is beautiful and deep as she explores her ancestry, digging into the life of her great grandfather Métis fiddler and performer Leon Robert Goulet. This was a facinating biography! The way she writes so openly, yearning to connect with her kin was very soulful and riviting. Porter lets us glimps into the past, offers a portrait of what life was like then. The importance and tradition of music being taught and carried through the generations of their family, but also the realities of colonialism.
This was so well written and structured. I loved the way she combined poetry, photographs, newspaper articles, oral histories, music and fire ecology to unfold this journey. It's truly a work of art.
Thank You @breakwaterbooks for sending me this book opinions are my own.
December 22, 2020
“Approaching Fire,” by Michelle Porter, is a beautiful book about family history and acceptance. In lovely, poetic prose, the author takes her audience on a journey of family heritage and honest conversation about what it means to have to hide your identity-sometimes even your name-just to fit in and make your mark in the world. This memoir has the author searching her family tree for her great-grandfather, Leon Robert Goulet, noted Metis fiddler. I love how the book opens, with the narrator poignantly yearning to know more about family members–namely her great-grandfather. The sense of longing and loss she expresses is painful but soulful, reminding me of how a child of adoption yearns to know about their biological parents. Readers will immediately be drawn to the author’s style, which feels almost musical, like a slow, dreamy ballad.
She writes of times when her ancestors had to hide who they were, in the face of prejudice and judgement, which is true for many groups of people then and now. It’s easy to recognize that Porter is an award-winning writer, journalist, and poet. She has lovingly crafted an exquisite family album using thoughts, letters, poetry, images, mementos, newspaper clippings, and phraseology around fire. This assemblage alone makes the memoir stand out and brings this family to life in a way that an ordinary memoir couldn’t.
Anyone who has dreamed of finding out more about their ancestors or sympathized with their struggles to overcome barriers and fit in, can relate to the author’s story. Born from the stories she’d heard about her family band, she set out to discover why her great-grandfather picked up and moved away from all that he knew and cared about, but she also wanted to find her own connections with her family that could lend to healing via a cleansing fire. “Approaching Fire”, by Michelle Porter, is far from being a mere scrapbook. It’s a tribute to what family can mean.
She writes of times when her ancestors had to hide who they were, in the face of prejudice and judgement, which is true for many groups of people then and now. It’s easy to recognize that Porter is an award-winning writer, journalist, and poet. She has lovingly crafted an exquisite family album using thoughts, letters, poetry, images, mementos, newspaper clippings, and phraseology around fire. This assemblage alone makes the memoir stand out and brings this family to life in a way that an ordinary memoir couldn’t.
Anyone who has dreamed of finding out more about their ancestors or sympathized with their struggles to overcome barriers and fit in, can relate to the author’s story. Born from the stories she’d heard about her family band, she set out to discover why her great-grandfather picked up and moved away from all that he knew and cared about, but she also wanted to find her own connections with her family that could lend to healing via a cleansing fire. “Approaching Fire”, by Michelle Porter, is far from being a mere scrapbook. It’s a tribute to what family can mean.
January 27, 2021
I am always looking to learn more about Indigenous Peoples, and I was honoured to learn more about Métis peoples from Michelle Porter. This is a collection of musicology, poetry, photographs, and letters. Porter is on a search to understand and learn more about her great-grandfather but ends up with more questions than answers.
It’s my first time reading a memoir like this but I enjoyed the different writing styles. I was hoping for more poetry because that’s what I enjoyed the most. I enjoyed the fire ecology research the author made on a rainforest in BC. The author follows the scientist Kira Hoffman who was able to reconstruct 700 years of fire history! This is a topic I have very limited knowledge on so I found this to be extremely interesting and in some ways heartbreaking because there have been so many important events that have not been documented or just hidden.
There is no way that I could ever understand the author’s or any Indigenous person’s experiences, however I did resonate with Porter’s loss and confusion as an individual and as a member of a community. This memoir taught me the importance of my solidarity with Indigenous peoples.
I recommend that you take your time with this one. There’s a lot to learn even if it seems that there aren’t many words. I would love to read more of Porter’s poetry because it really hit me deep.
-
Thank you to Breakwater Books for gifting me a copy in exchange for an honest review.
It’s my first time reading a memoir like this but I enjoyed the different writing styles. I was hoping for more poetry because that’s what I enjoyed the most. I enjoyed the fire ecology research the author made on a rainforest in BC. The author follows the scientist Kira Hoffman who was able to reconstruct 700 years of fire history! This is a topic I have very limited knowledge on so I found this to be extremely interesting and in some ways heartbreaking because there have been so many important events that have not been documented or just hidden.
There is no way that I could ever understand the author’s or any Indigenous person’s experiences, however I did resonate with Porter’s loss and confusion as an individual and as a member of a community. This memoir taught me the importance of my solidarity with Indigenous peoples.
I recommend that you take your time with this one. There’s a lot to learn even if it seems that there aren’t many words. I would love to read more of Porter’s poetry because it really hit me deep.
-
Thank you to Breakwater Books for gifting me a copy in exchange for an honest review.
April 27, 2021
I hadn’t previously heard of this book but it was on display with a stack of copies at the front of my library, as part of a City Reads program this spring. I’m really glad I picked it up and decided to read it.
Porter is a great writer and this book offers some really intriguing craft work to blend vignettes of memoir, poetry, oral history, archival memory/research, and biography. It’s a beautiful and tender almost scrapbook-like homage to her great-grandfathers legacy as an acclaimed Métis fiddler-musician (most known for the Red River Jig.)
I loved Porter’s short memoir and poetry writing best, though at times it felt a bit jarring to jump directly into the poetry back to back against the other voices in the writing, such as the letters to her great grandfather. I think I would’ve liked to see more space between these pages—specifically to distinguish and honour the poetry. Because of the formatting of the book, it feels a bit compressed.
The thread of fire as metaphor was incredibly well done, stoking flames throughout the book until we are fully engulfed.
Porter is a great writer and this book offers some really intriguing craft work to blend vignettes of memoir, poetry, oral history, archival memory/research, and biography. It’s a beautiful and tender almost scrapbook-like homage to her great-grandfathers legacy as an acclaimed Métis fiddler-musician (most known for the Red River Jig.)
I loved Porter’s short memoir and poetry writing best, though at times it felt a bit jarring to jump directly into the poetry back to back against the other voices in the writing, such as the letters to her great grandfather. I think I would’ve liked to see more space between these pages—specifically to distinguish and honour the poetry. Because of the formatting of the book, it feels a bit compressed.
The thread of fire as metaphor was incredibly well done, stoking flames throughout the book until we are fully engulfed.
May 7, 2021
I read this book for the High Plains Book Awards in the Creative Nonfiction category. The author uses multiple vehicles to share her story of searching for her grandfather and the legacy he left through his music.
In Approaching Fire, Michelle Porter embarks on a quest to find her great-grandfather, the M?tis fiddler and performer L?on Robert Goulet. Through musicology, jigs and reels, poetry, photographs, and the ecology of fire, Porter invests biography with the power of reflective ingenuity, creating a portrait which expands beyond documentation into a private realm where truth meets metaphor.
Weaving through multiple genres and traditions, Approaching Fire fashions a textual documentary of rescue and insight, and a glowing contemplation of the ways in which loss can generate unbridled renewal.
In Approaching Fire, Michelle Porter embarks on a quest to find her great-grandfather, the M?tis fiddler and performer L?on Robert Goulet. Through musicology, jigs and reels, poetry, photographs, and the ecology of fire, Porter invests biography with the power of reflective ingenuity, creating a portrait which expands beyond documentation into a private realm where truth meets metaphor.
Weaving through multiple genres and traditions, Approaching Fire fashions a textual documentary of rescue and insight, and a glowing contemplation of the ways in which loss can generate unbridled renewal.
February 28, 2021
I didn’t know what to expect from this book but it definitely wasn’t this style. I really liked how it flowed between prose, poetry, news clippings, and letters. I like the theme of fire throughout the book but sometimes it felt a bit forced, and I don’t know how it all necessarily ties together with the theme. That being said, it’s a very personal book and I appreciated receiving those emotions as a third party looking in. I don’t read current or new books very often and it was very surreal for me to read something in the same year that it was published, especially when that year takes place inside a global pandemic.
I read this for the National Arts Centre Indigenous Theatre’s Indigenous Book Club: Our Stories. I’m excited to get to the next books on the list!
I read this for the National Arts Centre Indigenous Theatre’s Indigenous Book Club: Our Stories. I’m excited to get to the next books on the list!
May 1, 2023
This is a tough one to review, and I'm wavering between three and four stars. I was really moved by some parts, others passed me by a little. Undoubtedly, this is a book worthy of respect. It's innovative in its approach, blending poetry, letters and prose, and is skilfully crafted. Porter effectively conveys a sense of longing for connection and searching for identity.
May 20, 2021
This is a fantastic, abstract and circuitous book. It is short but impactful, and there is a lot to take in, in the pauses between the words, phrases, and vignettes in the book. The end makes me want to know more about their story, just as the author says!
April 22, 2022
I don't read a lot of poetry, but this was on display at my library and caught my eye. Really enjoyed the story that was told, with some history and with themes of fire and music. Nice change from my usual types of books!
March 1, 2021
Enjoyed the letters/scrapbook feel I got from this ensemble. Informative read that had a fluidness different from what typical books have. Quite appreciative of the newly learned bits about fires.
July 8, 2021
Everyone needs to read this book.
December 18, 2020
Thank you to Breakwater Books for sending me this book! I’m always looking to read more Canadian literature (especially Indigenous stories).
This is a deeply personal book about a woman's quest to find out the story of one of her ancestors. Told through musicology, jigs and reels, poetry, photographs, and the ecology of fire, Porter shares how she tracked down her grandfather's story, the Métis fiddler and performer Léon Robert Goulet.
I liked the way she weaved in her family's history, and the history of Métis in Manitoba. Porter's story highlights the importance of learning about our ancestors and where we come from; understanding their history and where we are today.
This is a deeply personal book about a woman's quest to find out the story of one of her ancestors. Told through musicology, jigs and reels, poetry, photographs, and the ecology of fire, Porter shares how she tracked down her grandfather's story, the Métis fiddler and performer Léon Robert Goulet.
I liked the way she weaved in her family's history, and the history of Métis in Manitoba. Porter's story highlights the importance of learning about our ancestors and where we come from; understanding their history and where we are today.
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