Billy-Ray Belcourt—a poet who currently teaches at the University of Alberta and is reading at Camosun College on Thursday, October 3—had his most recent book, NDN Coping Mechanisms: Notes from the Field, published earlier this month. It’s just the latest achievement for Belcourt, who became the youngest person in history to win the Griffin Poetry Prize in 2018.
“I didn’t find out I won until everyone else did,” says Belcourt about winning the Griffin, “so that night I was experiencing every emotion at its most humanly intense.”
Those intense emotions are nothing new to Belcourt, a queer Indigenous writer. He grew up in Driftpile Cree Nation in Alberta and has known his share of heartbreak. But he has also had overwhelming support.
“My reserve [has] always been very supportive of my career,” he says. “They’ve always found ways to lift me up and I’ve been really grateful for that.”
Belcourt—who is also appearing at the Victoria Festival of Authors this year—has published two books of poetry. His first, This Wound is a World—which is part social critique, part memoir—won him the Griffin.NDN Coping Mechanisms focuses on particular historical events.
“When I was writing This Wound is a Worlda lot of what I wrote about came out of immediate lived experience, so something usually troubling or upsetting or heartbreaking,” he says.
A keystone moment that solidified Belcourt’s want to be a writer happened soon after he had started writing. His first public reading was at an Indigenous conference at the University of Alberta. His writing had helped a woman in the crowd understand someone in her life who had recently died.
“We, like, in the middle of the crowd, hug each other and cried, and it was that moment, I think, that really brought into focus that one could write not only to save themselves but to help others save others,” says Belcourt.
This caused Belcourt to feel like his writing gave this life-giving possibility, that he could help someone find their footing better than they had before.
“As a writer I’m trying to remember everything as a person that’s not always to my benefit, but that’s just sort of emotional blowback that you have to weather as a writer in the hopes that you can translate that into something beautiful or artful.”
Belcourt’s third book, A History of my Brief Body, is scheduled to be published in May 2020. And the ideas don’t stop there.
“I’m sort of one of those people who always has a number of possible books that they want to write floating about in their brain,” he says.
Camosun College Indigenous Speakers Series
With Billy-Ray Belcourt
4 pm Thursday, October 3
Free, Young 216, Lansdowne campus, Camosun College
Email lundgrenj@camosun.bc.ca for more info
Victoria Festival of Authors
Various times, Wednesday, October 2 to Sunday, October 6
Various prices, various venues
victoriafestivalofauthors.ca