I can’t imagine myself reading bedtime stories to a toddler, and I’m older than my father was when he read those brightly colored books to me. His voice is deeper than mine will ever be but just as sweet. I always picked Freight Train. I loved the black caboose. A train runs across this track… through tunnels and cities, darkness and light, forever. I still love books where nothing happens, good or bad. The page is one landscape I move through.
"His poetry is often forgotten or overshadowed in the Joycean canon by the later achievements of the prose works. His first published book, however, was the 1907 collection of poems, Chamber Music, a title that may or may not have suggested itself on an occasion when Joyce read a few of the poems to his friend Oliver St. Gogarty in the company of a widow named Jenny."
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"The English translation is a reminder of linguistic colonization. English now surrounds both Irish and Ojibwe, but in my translation is not the primary vehicle for interpretation. Providing an English version of the poem ensures it can be read by Ojibwe speakers who may not know Irish and Irish speakers who may not know Ojibwe. It also reflects that this is a poem primarily concerned with the connection between Irish and Ojibwe which is a decolonial act of reclamation."
