In celebration of April as Poetry Month, CBC is promoting poetry on the site CBC.ca/wordsatlarge.

The site mentions that the League of Canadian Poets established April as Poetry Month in 1999, and that “The League brings together bookstores, libraries, literary organizations, cultural centres and poets to celebrate and acknowledge the vital role of poetry, arguably the world’s oldest form of literature.”

In recognition of poetry month, Raincoast would like to celebrate award-winning poet Gregory Scofield.

Singing Home the Bones is Scofield’s first book in more than five years. He reclaims through poetry and storytelling the untold history of the Metis people and his own biological family—in particular, his mysterious father, whom he discovers to be Jewish.

Singing Home the Bones is a startling mix of narrative prose and lyric poetry, and it is my personal favourite. To me, the format is comparable to Dennis Cooley’s Irene, Robert Kroetsch’s Seed Catalogue or any of the great prairie long poems, which are a collection of poetry, prose--and sometimes recipes, quotes or snippets of other memorabilia.

Gregory Scofield (Calgary) is a Metis poet, writer, activist and community worker whose maternal ancestry can be traced back five generations to the Red River Settlement and to Kinesota, Manitoba. He has published four much-praised and award-winning books of poetry as well as a memoir, Thunder in My Veins: Memories of a Metis Childhood. He teaches First Nations and Metis poetry at Brandon University in Manitoba.

For more books by Gregory Scofield, visit the Raincoast website.

Buy the Book from Amazon.ca or search for a Canadian independent retailer.