North End Love Songs

Winner of the 2013 Governor General's Award for Poetry.

For Katherena Vermette, Winnipeg’s North End is neighbourhood of colourful birds, stately elms, and always wily rivers. It is where a brother’s disappearance is trivialized by local media and police because he is young and aboriginal. It is also where young girls share secrets, movies, cigarettes, Big Gulps and stories of love—where a young mother full of both maternal trepidation and joy watches her small daughters as they play in the park.

“In North End Love Songs, Katherena Vermette uses spare language and brief, telling sketches to illuminate the aviary of a prairie neighbourhood. Vermette’s love songs are unconventional and imminent, an examination and a celebration of family and community in all weathers, the beautiful as well as the less clement conditions. This collection is a very moving tribute, to the girls and the women, the boys and the men, and the loving trouble that has forever transpired between us.” - Joanne Arnott

“From a mixed-blood Métis woman with Mennonite roots, Kate weaves a story that winds its way through the north end (Nor-tend) of Winnipeg. It’s a story of death, birth, survival, beauty and ugliness; through it all there are glimmers of hope, strength, and a will to survive whatever this city throws at you.” - Duncan Mercredi

Katherena Vermette is a Métis writer of poetry and fiction. Her work has appeared in several literary magazines and compilations, including Manitowapow: Aboriginal Writings from the Land of Water. Vermette was the 2010-2011 writerscollective.org Blogger in Residence and recently began graduate work in the prestigious Master of Fine Arts Creative Writing program at the University of British Columbia. A member of the Aboriginal Writers Collective of Manitoba since 2004, Vermette lives, works and plays in Winnipeg, Manitoba.