Calling Down the Sky

"This poetry collection is fierce, raw and candid. By recounting her mother's residential school experience in a powerfully poetic narrative, Deerchild expertly illustrates the heartbreaking trauma of that tragic saga and how it complicates relationships over generations." - Waubgeshig Rice, author of Moon of the Crusted Snow

A tenth anniversary bilingual edition in English and Cree of Rosanna Deerchild’s stunning collection about the intergenerational impacts of the Canadian residential school system.

you want me to
share my story

ok then
here it is
here in the unwritten
here in the broken lines
of my body that can never forget

î-nitawîthimiyan
kita-âcimostâtân nitâcimisowin

hâw mâka
mâkôocirc;ma
ôta îkâ kâ-kî-masinahikâtîk
ôta kâ-pîkopathiki masinahikîwina
nimiyaw îkâ wîhkâc kâ-wanikiskisit

In Calling Down the Sky, poet Rosanna Deerchild viscerally evokes her mother’s experience within the residential school system, the Canadian government’s system of violently removing Indigenous children from their homes, families, and languages in an explicit attempt to destroy Indigenous cultures and identities. With precise and intricate poetry, Deerchild weaves together the story of her mother’s childhood and Deerchild’s memories of her mother: her love of country music, her attempts to talk about what happened to her, how tightly she braided her daughter’s hair on the first day of school. In doing so, Deerchild illustrates the disruptive and devastating impacts of the residential school system on generations of families while also celebrating the life and culture of her mother and other survivors. 

Published for the first time in a bilingual edition of Cree and English, in time for the tenth anniversary of the original publication, Calling Down the Sky is an intimate and gorgeously evoked reckoning with a horrifying part of North American history.