Poetry inspired by residential school archival photos
- Andréa Ledding | July 18, 2016
Lisa Bird-Wilson’s second book, following her award-winning short story collection Just Pretending, is a collection of poetry inspired by Residential School archival photos.
“I had some photos that had been passed along to me by my Uncle and an Auntie. The photos contained family members who had gone to Residential School. All of the photos in my possession included the names of the people in the pictures—pretty much all the kids were identified,” explained Bird-Wilson. “Much later, when I saw photos from both the church and national archives I realized there was a significant difference. The archived pictures make no attempt to identify who are the kids in the pictures. That was disappointing and revealing—I guess in that moment the anonymity of the children just became so apparent to me.”
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She wanted to dissect what was at the core of a colonial structure and system that could see the identity of so many children as unimportant or even interchangeable.
“While the collection started with the photos, it expanded over time to include documents, maps, treaty records, scrip accounts, diaries, government reports, regional histories, geographies, and so on. I spent a lot of time in the archives, reading and combing through documents.”
She chose poetry because it was more immediate and conveys an emotional response. “These braids remember the women,” is the beginning and ending line of her first poem, Mourning Day, which deals with the chopping of hair.
“I wanted to say something revealing or respond in some way—like an offering—this was the thing that I could do, as an artist,” she explained, adding that there are lots of poets in her writing group, Viz Ink. “So I was inspired by them, and I love that poetry is so boiled down and beautiful and revealing.”
The title was actually the last part of the long process, but it tied into the research.
“Late one night I was thinking about when I went to Ottawa to do research at Archives Canada and what the files actually looked like and what it felt like to be there. Some of the physical files had the words Red or Black on them in handwriting,” she explained. “There have been many classification systems, series and sub series since then, but those were the earliest. I thought there was something ironic in the red series title, and suggested this. It must have resonated with the publisher because here we are with a book called The Red Files.”
The Red Files, published by Nightwood Editions, is available online and in bookstores.