{"id":18290,"date":"2019-10-01T08:00:26","date_gmt":"2019-10-01T15:00:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/?p=18290"},"modified":"2019-10-01T08:59:43","modified_gmt":"2019-10-01T15:59:43","slug":"griffin-poetry-prize-winner-billy-ray-belcourt-brings-poetry-to-camosun-college","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/2019\/10\/01\/griffin-poetry-prize-winner-billy-ray-belcourt-brings-poetry-to-camosun-college\/","title":{"rendered":"Griffin Poetry Prize winner Billy-Ray Belcourt brings poetry to Camosun College"},"content":{"rendered":"

Billy-Ray Belcourt\u2014a poet who currently teaches at the University of Alberta and is reading at Camosun College on Thursday, October 3\u2014had his most recent book, NDN Coping Mechanisms: Notes from the Field<\/em>, published earlier this month. It\u2019s just the latest achievement for Belcourt, who became the youngest person in history to win the Griffin Poetry Prize in 2018.<\/p>\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t find out I won until everyone else did,\u201d says Belcourt about winning the Griffin, \u201cso that night I was experiencing every emotion at its most humanly intense.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Billy-Ray Belcourt will be reading his poetry at Camosun this week (photo by Tenille Campbell).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy reserve [has] always been very supportive of my career,\u201d he says. \u201cThey\u2019ve always found ways to lift me up and I\u2019ve been really grateful for that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Belcourt\u2014who is also appearing at the Victoria Festival of Authors this year\u2014has published two books of poetry. His first, This Wound is a World<\/em>\u2014which is part social critique, part memoir\u2014won him the Griffin.NDN Coping Mechanisms <\/em>focuses on particular historical events.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I was writing This Wound is a World<\/em>a lot of what I wrote about came out of immediate lived experience, so something usually troubling or upsetting or heartbreaking,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

A keystone moment that solidified Belcourt\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe, 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,\u201d says Belcourt.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs a writer I\u2019m trying to remember everything as a person that\u2019s not always to my benefit, but that\u2019s 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

Belcourt\u2019s third book, A History of my Brief Body<\/em>, is scheduled to be published in May 2020. And the ideas don\u2019t stop there.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m sort of one of those people who always has a number of possible books that they want to write floating about in their brain,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Camosun College Indigenous Speakers Series
\nWith Billy-Ray Belcourt
\n4 pm Thursday, October 3
\nFree, Young 216, Lansdowne campus, Camosun College
\nEmail lundgrenj@camosun.bc.ca for more info<\/p>\n

Victoria Festival of Authors
\nVarious times, Wednesday, October 2 to Sunday, October 6
\nVarious prices, various venues
\nvictoriafestivalofauthors.ca<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Billy-Ray Belcourt\u2014a poet who currently teaches at the University of Alberta and is reading at Camosun College on Thursday, October 3\u2014had his most recent book, NDN Coping Mechanisms: Notes from the Field, published earlier this month. It\u2019s just the latest achievement for Belcourt, who became the youngest person in history to win the Griffin Poetry […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":18291,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18290","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-webexclusive"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18290","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18290"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18290\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18296,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18290\/revisions\/18296"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18291"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18290"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18290"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18290"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}