I re-read aloud my favourite poems back at home) because Belcourt has such a wonderful way of playing with language, word choice, and tone.
I read most of it aloud (and where I read in the park. "Remember: one person's unlivable life is another's plagiarized guilt." Certainly, I liked some pieces more than others, but every piece was a little gift to read. So, I'll just say that Billy-Ray's writing is so well realized it was, again, enough to bring me to tears. There is so much within this collection that I could gush about - from what I'm thinking is probably my favourite piece 'At The Mercy Of The Sky' to the clever redactions of Treaty 8 ( "A reaper given all the encouragement to continue hunting on behalf of the law") - but I'd never be able to express my feelings well enough to do it justice. I was so enthralled with the way that Billy-Ray Belcourt conveyed his thoughts that I was constantly taking moments to collect myself or re-read certain lines that really stood out to me. There is so much within this collection that resonated with me, awed me, touched me. NDN Coping Mechanisms is one of those collections. It takes a lot for me to really click with this type of literature, but when I do, it's a really special feeling for me. I am the type of person who loves the idea of poetry but has a hard time connecting to much of the poetry I'm aware of. Revenge is more decolonial than justice." "If I could uninvent the words 'priest' and 'prayer', then the dead could come back from the dead for at least a chance at revenge. It was the poem 'At The Mercy Of The Sky', page 22, and I suddenly found myself covering my face with the book and just crying. Not to be dramatic, but this book made me burst into tears. In the process, Belcourt once again demonstrates his extraordinary craft, guile, and audacity, and the sheer dexterity of his imagination. In NDN Coping Notes from the Field, the poet takes on the political demands of queerness, mainstream portrayals of Indigenous life, love and its discontents, and the limits and uses of poetry as a vehicle for Indigenous liberation. In a genre-bending constellation of poetry, photography, redaction, and poetics, Belcourt ultimately argues that if signifiers of Indigenous suffering are everywhere, so too is evidence of Indigenous peoples’ rogue possibility, their utopian drive.
He aims an anthropological eye at the realities of everyday life to show how they house the violence that continues to reverberate from the long twentieth century. In his follow-up to This Wound is a World, Billy-Ray Belcourt’s Griffin Poetry Prize–winning collection, NDN Coping Notes from the Field is a provocative, powerful, and genre-bending new work that uses the modes of accusation and interrogation.
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