Poet's Corner: “half-blood” by Justene Dion-Glowa

by Mikaela Brewer ​for The 44 North

Senior Editor

“half-blood” by Justene Dion-Glowa from The League of Canadian Poets’ Poetry Pause, June 5th, 2024

A bison in a wheat field under a cloudy sky

Note: This poem is not in the public domain! Please use the link above to read it.

Justene Dion-Glowa is a queer Métis poet living in Secwepemcúl’ecw. An alum of the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, they now work in the non-profit sector and recently released their first full-length poetry collection, Trailer Park Shakes, available now via Brick Books.

The brilliance of Justene Dion-Glowa’s poem shines through their use of white space on the page, which is one of my favourite craft tools in poetry. In “half-blood”, space—including caesuras, stanza breaks, line breaks, and indents, for example—works as hard as words, enacting the feeling of being ‘halved’ alongside a sort of sinister whiteness. But there is also space for thought, pause, breath, love, and reverence, for “the strength of our people / and Creator / reflecting in my eye shine”. The title of the poem, “half-blood”, isn’t extrapolated directly, but this is why it works so well: it layers the poem’s language. And although it likely speaks to Dion-Glowa’s Métis heritage, it also says: for so much to coexist is to be devastated—to be in a perpetual state of halving oneself and being halved by society. It’s both a brand of erasure and a necessary state of reflection.

Dion-Glowa, with tender care, also weaves in reflections on longing for the “sleek, hot, and slender-framed conventionally attractive”, “not made for a life of hardship”. A longing, now, to be halved. But I also think about the etymology of the word ‘hardship’, which conjures the rigidity of the British and French ships seemingly pouring into harbours, everything aboard inflicted like a trap. Dion-Glowa’s lines, here, gently shift blame and fault from them and their people. Followed by white space, I see these lines afloat, reclaiming the sea dominated by whiteness. 

There are also several short lines, intentionally placed to help us mirror feeling. For example, “spoons tapping along to the rhythm / I consider / how lucky I am / to have a weight I must carry physically” offers space to mirror how we consider gratitude, particularly with the inclusion of extra space beneath “how lucky I am”. Similarly, Dion-Glowa leaves extra space for generations to hurt—the past is not obsolete or ‘back in time’, it’s ongoing and always with us. The hurt didn’t happen behind us, it’s beneath our every step.

I’m also drawn to the musicality in “half-blood”, specifically in “girthy thighs”, “bison & bear”, and “food / fur / fibre / so / I starve no longer.” When rhyme and alliteration are used here, they ask us to chew. The language is delicious, so an excellent craft choice for the content of these lines (which become memorable for these reasons).

In the same vein as musicality, word choice profoundly shapes a poem. The word ‘meager’ stands out, starkly, because it’s the only word italicized. It also drives the last line, and is uncapitalized when we’d expect a capital ‘M’. We so often repeat “meager means” when we’re speaking about intentionally marginalized and “underprivileged” folks. By using lower case and italics, Dion-Glowa is tapping on the shoulder of the inflection—fear, discomfort, disgust—that’s used when we say ‘meager’, which our lexicon bolsters: “deficient in quantity, fullness, or extent; scanty, deficient in richness, fertility, or vigor; feeble, having little flesh; lean (The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition).” Anti-fatness and ableism are apparent here without these exact words, reflective of the covert ways they outline our world. This is the power of poetry—‘meager’ is one word, and placed well, it does the work of evoking everything “half-blood” is alive on the page to say: in body, mind, spirit, and relationship, Dion-Glowa and their people are not, never have been, and never will be meager.

Artist Spotlight: Wenzdae Anaïs Brewster (she/her)

by Mikaela Brewer ​for The 44 North

Wenzdae sitting on a wooden chair next to a window. She is wearing a green, brown, and red patterned skirt and a flowy white top. She has tattoos, lots of jewelry, piercings, and large glasses. Her hair is blond and cropped short, and she has light brown skin. Next to her are several plants and a wooden side table with a lamp.

Multimedia Artist: digital, traditional beadwork, oddity work, and painting 

Wenzdae (she/her) is an Afro-Indigenous, multi-media artist hailing from the Georgian Bay Metis Community, of which she is a registered and claimed member. She is a direct descendant of the Clermont-Dusome, Trudeau-Papanaathyhianencoe and Beausoliel-Giroux family lines, and her lineage is traced to Manitoba as well as Barbados on her paternal side.

Wenzdae is an accomplished artist with many credits to her name. She specializes in jewellery production, Indigenous beadwork, graphic design, and traditional hand-poke tattoos. Wenzdae has over 13 years of experience and mentorship under her belt.

Her credits include artworks published in both media and television, including creating beadwork for ‘Motherland: Fort Salem’ and an upcoming season of

‘Sullivan’s Crossing’ as well as outfitting several Indigenous community leaders and celebrities.

She is a published author, illustrator and photographer, with one of her iconic images being named amongst CBC’s top 12 best Canadian book covers of 2017. She was also a recipient of the 2013 James Bartleman Aboriginal Youth Creative Writing Award and has multiple upcoming projects and publications coming in the following years through her agency (Trans Atlantic Agency) and Swift Water Books.

Website: wenzdaeweird.ca

Instagram: instagram.com/wenzdaeweird.ca

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“My roots will always play a key role in how I think, how I create and perceive the world but they will not define or limit me as an artist. I hope people see that art and culture are not the same as history. Culture is forever shifting and growing, evolving and expanding. Finding new ways to implement old techniques into modernity is one of the ways we carry our ancestors into the present.”

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For a few years, I've had the absolute privilege of wearing and admiring Wenzdae's art. Please spend some time with her responses to my questions about her work, alongside photographs of the variety of art she crafts!

M: For each of your projects/artworks, is there a story behind their crafting/creation process that you'd like to share?

W: Each creation is made different but with equal intention and care. I never truly have a plan going into a new piece (even when I think I do—haha). The theme of the work varies based on what I want to emphasize or project into the world, but the foundation of all my creations is my culture. I spent years under the mentorship of my chosen aunt, June Taylor, who taught me everything I know about Indigenous beadwork (specifically woodlands aesthetic) while we sat at her kitchen table. No matter what I create, the foundation of my knowledge stems back to those days. 

M: How do you, your family, ancestry, community, politics, and values braid into your work on these projects? Where/how, especially, would you like folks to witness/experience this when spending time with your work? Is there anything you hope people pay particular attention to? Take action with/from?

W: I am an intuitive artist who also happens to be Black and Indigenous, as well as European and South Asian. My creative knowledge stems from my Metis heritage, which I grew up deeply entrenched in—from plant medicine knowledge to resistance through storytelling. I like to think of my work as culturally rooted in that heritage but able to be enjoyed by all. I have no intention of separating myself, my beliefs or morals from my work. I like to call myself a radical hippie—as I strongly stand for freedom and equality, which has never truly been achieved by the “peace and love” motto we typically identify with hippie culture, particularly as it pertains to non-western communities. My roots will always play a key role in how I think, how I create and perceive the world, but they will not define or limit me as an artist. I hope people see that art and culture are not the same as history. Culture is forever shifting and growing, evolving and expanding. Finding new ways to implement old techniques into modernity is one of the ways we carry our ancestors into the present.

M: If these projects could speak, what might they say/offer? If not in words, what might they offer in energy? Mind, body, heart, spirit? 

W: My work would offer a new perspective on mixed identity, not one that “waters down” any one of the cultures in my background but one that incorporates, shares and enhances each, in particular, the ways in which they connect and alchemize into something uniquely beautiful. Love knows no boundaries or borders, so cultural appreciation is essential for the ethical trading of knowledge, skills, stories, and arts. My work embraces elements of the aesthetics and environmentally informed processes that underpin my understanding of art, while also bringing its own unique characteristics that have been made possible through the act of true cross-cultural communication. 

Hand-painted ethically harvested animal skulls with upcycled vintage frames (2024-2025).

Accessibility text: An array of animal skulls painted in many different colours, shapes, and designs.

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Modern beadwork created for the set of “Motherland: Fort Salem (2023)”

Accessibility text: Several women (characters) from the show "Motherland: Fort Salem" wearing a variety of Wenzdae's beaded jewelry, especially earrings.

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A sample of diverse styles & mediums re: original illustrations for current & forthcoming projects

Accessibility text: 2 paintings of Indigenous women in pink and purple dresses decorated with rainbows, flowers, and butterflies. They are also wearing black and white feathers in their hair.

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Eighteen unique images commissioned by Indigenous Geographic

Accessibility text: "A diverse and visually vibrant range of illustrations inspired by Métis culture, ensuring accuracy and respect for traditional design elements.” The images include canoes, flowers, moccasins, and more!

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Utilizing natural & upcycled materials, glass cut beads and ethically harvested and treated animal products. Samples from recent commissioned and creative projects (2022-2025)

Accessibility text: Many pieces of beaded jewelry in different colours, including rings, earrings, necklaces, and small purses. They feature images of water, trees, people, flowers, and other shapes.

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Early draft illustrations for ‘THE GIRL WHO COLLECTED STARS’ (Swift Water Books/Penguin Random House Canada, forthcoming 2026)

Accessibility text: 2 drawings of a young girl with medium brown skin, brown curly hair, and round glasses. In the first, she is looking out the window of an apartment building at night, through purple curtains. The building is surrounded by flowers and stars, and a small black cat looks out the window next to her. In the second image, the girl is standing on a green stool with blue flowers, looking into a mirror. She's wearing a striped purple dress and pink socks.

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Signature Beadwork Style

Accessibility text: This signature style came from a dream Wenzdae had of beautiful birch bark paddles dripping with beaded florals and berries, and they carried people to and from the river banks. Upon waking up, she knew she had to re-create this vision. The Métis (also known as the floral beadwork people) are known for their intricate botanical beadwork designs on materials such as plush velvet. Wenzdae combined the teardrop shape of an ore with colourful materials and glass cut beads to make her staple beadwork design she’s now known for. You can view these creations on her website or on the big screen.

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Poet's Corner: "The Albatross’s Sonnet to Western Civilization as the Madleen Sets Sail for Gaza" by Tishani Doshi

by Mikaela Brewer ​for The 44 North

“The Albatross’s Sonnet to Western Civilization as the Madleen Sets Sail for Gaza” from Rattle’s Poets Respond June 17th, 2025. 

A bird’s-eye-view of a cargo boat

Note: This poem is not in the public domain! Please use the link above to read it, alongside Tishani’s audio reading & notes about the poem. Further, here are helpful texts referenced in the poem: “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1834)” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge and “Compare the courage of Greta Thunberg’s Gaza aid mission with the inaction and complicity of western governments” by Owen Jones for The Guardian. 

Tishani Doshi writes poetry, fiction, and essays that explore the meeting of the lyrical and political. The body recurs in her writing, stemming from fifteen years working as the lead dancer of the Chandralekha company in Madras, India. In her work, the body is “a vehicle to explore gender, violence, sexuality and power, but also as an agent of renewal and transformation.” Doshi’s writing has won and been shortlisted for numerous awards, including the Forward Prize, the Ted Hughes Award, the Hindu Fiction Prize, Tata Fiction Award, and the RSL Ondaatje Prize. She is an Associate Professor of Literature and Creative Writing at New York University, Abu Dhabi, and a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature (paraphrased from her website).

Truthfully, the last time I read Coleridge’s “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” was in high school. Still a difficult read, enacting archaic English spelling, it’s fascinating to revisit now. You don’t need to have read it to experience Doshi’s poem, so in brief summary, it’s a long poem about the mental, spiritual, and physical consequences of violating nature (the mariner senselessly kills an albatross while he and his crew are at sea, and faces an onslaught of suffering). 

I was captivated by the question inherent in Doshi’s poem: if the albatross were to speak—in sonnet, one of the most well-used and unique of Western poetic forms, typically used in praise or love of a beloved—what might it say, now, flying above a humanitarian aid ship bound for Gaza, by which we mean and know: bound to not reach Gaza? For me, more haunting than the question was that I already knew its answer. I’d wager most of us do. And yet, “Remember, when all of this was going on, / there were some who were homesick for the world / and what it could have been, and others who were silent.”

Typically, a ‘traditional’ sonnet has fourteen lines, set in iambic pentameter, and utilizes a particular rhyme scheme: Petrarchan sonnets are ABBA ABBA CDECDE or ABBA ABBA CDCDCD, and Shakespearean sonnets are ABAB CDCD EFEF GG. In Petrarchan sonnets, there is one octave (eight-line stanza) followed by a sestet (six-line stanza). In a Shakespearean sonnet, there are three quatrains (four-line stanzas) followed by a couplet (two-line stanza). There is always a volta before the final stanza—the poem’s transition or turning point. 

Right away, we notice that the poem bends many of these “rules”. It doesn’t follow traditional form, which to me indicates a need: to first understand/acknowledge a “rule” and then to break it. I wonder if this is why there are echoes of traditional form, particularly with rhyme in the middle of lines (end & friends, malfunctioning & unveiling, coat & told & globe, seen & besieged, and do & two, for example). Similarly, the volta appears with an em dash and a question: “what we’ve seen what we’ve seen what we’ve seen— / will you still ask, What can one boat do for the besieged?” It’s as if the albatross is saying, “I know your tools well, and I will try to use them to make you listen.” The rhyming words scattered throughout the poem amplify this, giving a sense of crumbling. The empire of Western civilization is falling apart and “coming to an end.”

Further, rhyme slants and tapers off as the poem moves. The last few lines don’t rhyme as much and feel matter-of-fact. But exceptionally poignant is the fact that the obvious rhyme with “been” in the very last line is “Madleen.” Instead, the final word is “silent.”

Stepping into imagery, we have the “friends” of Western civilization on a beach. I had to pause and think about who these friends might be, especially in conjunction with the “sheepskin coat.” All point to the uncompromising and unquestioning rule-following—“I only did what I was told”—bedrock among this family of civilizations, all of which followed one another, led like sheep, right off of a cliff. 

Last but certainly not least, the repetition Doshi uses with “what we’ve seen” three times alongside the preceding “when we’ve seen” leads into the volta. To me, this feels resonant of social media: we’re (necessarily) bearing witness to violence that so overwhelms our hearts we can’t describe it—all we can do is repeat, re-share, and repost phrases and clips. Interestingly, a version of this happens in “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.” After the mariner shoots the albatross down, the ship becomes trapped at sea, stuck without a breeze. The crew becomes so thirsty that they lose the ability to speak. This parallel is powerful, particularly after the Madleen was captured. Of everyone who wasn’t on board, who continued to speak when the Madleen’s passengers couldn’t? Poetry has an irreplaceable way of resourcing us with these types of questions and conversations. What a brilliant, needed poem. I hope we can all spend more time with it (and all of Tishani Doshi’s work).