Billy-Ray Belcourt — Subarctica

and the instruction was each morning to spend ten minutes in silence or something and to ask yourself

“what emotion was coming to and you know I suppose maybe because of some pain and also a”

propensity to melodrama you know I was quite prepared for pain or difficulty or struggle or all kinds of things to come towards me and when I finished this meditation practice it was because one morning with the absolute clarity of dawn it became clear to me that on the horizon for me was happiness and I got up and walked out of the room where I was doing the meditation thinking absolutely

not I can't cope with that I would have rather faced pain and face happiness and I was

shocked to think how did that happen and my body made the decision what was my rejection

“of that how was I so fundamentally oriented against something that might be good it”

took me a long time to reflect on that and in a certain sense both physically as well as emotionally and maybe with something like majority go back into that room so backed by Billy Ray Belkorde because it's the coldest December on record

I haven't left my mother's house in over a week I love how simple it is to live right now

it's so rarely is how small and in consequential my desires are which rarely are it would be easy to continue on in this way hemmed in on all sides by bright light

“at last Lord the whiteness of the world doesn't frighten me at last Lord I am not my”

anguish outside the window a row of populars sway at the edge of a tiny school yard each a statue of all each stunned by its own capacity for survival because I was so sad all the time I used to think like the famous poem that I was in the winter of my life but I was wrong I saw the whole world and still ached from my childhood which was half mystery half omen it isn't that death is a resolution but one day I too will be buried beneath snow somehow this

explains everything the images in this fantastic poem by Billy Ray Belkorde seem to present an image that sometimes containment like the opening one the coldest December on record I haven't left my mother's house in over a week that that containment can give you a way of living that is the opposite of restriction the mother's house of the poem makes me think

you know not just the biological idea of the house of your mother but also of mother land mother tongue mother house so there is a sense of particularity and locativeness that's here there's two parentheticals in the opening part of this poem and they're included in these lines I love how simple it is to live right now it's so rarely is how small and in consequential my desires are which rarely are so it's so rarely is and which rarely are are

like a sides they're in brackets parentheticals and they are a sides that are showing that the containment is the containment of possibility and of looking at things of things being removed and the idea that sometimes the removal of certain features of your life might give you a perspective point of view at last lord the whiteness of the world doesn't frighten me at last lord I am not my anguish so these two lines address to lord at last lord they also seem to be addressed to the speaker Billy Ray Bellcourt is an indigenous writer from the drift pile

of creenation in northern Alberta in Canada and he is interested as a queer writer as well in critiquing the colonial and settler gaze in the heteronormative gaze in

and the unings of the body sometimes erousing and sometimes alarming are present in so much of his exploration and his brilliant poetry

and so at last lord the whiteness of the world doesn't frighten me at last lord I am not my anguish these lines lift us up into a way within which this one poem is speaking across many of the interests of his work this happens to be the final poem of his latest collection

“and this speaker is veering into something cumulative like a song I think and telling the truth”

and using nostalgia of a snow struck period to tell the truth about the ways within which trauma

the ways within which anguish the ways within which a stuck story can sometimes make you stuck

and here he is stuck somewhere somewhere beautiful with this snow and becoming unstuck in the observation of the world around him [Music] The title of this poem is subactica and the subactic zone is region in the northern hemisphere immediately south of the arctic hence subactica and that covers much of Canada and Alaska and Iceland

“and the northern parts of Finland and Norway and Sweden and northwestern Russia and Siberia and part of Scotland”

this Karen Gorms and the interesting thing about my own experience of this poem is that despite the imagery of snow and the house and the tiny school yard and the window and the extraordinary emotional intelligence of this poem I keep on finding myself referring to this as being a poem about trees that's the image that sticks for me in this poem it might be different for different people here's the line outside the window a row of popplers sway at the edge of a tiny school yard

each a statue of all each stunned by its own capacity for survival

“there's a line break at statue so when you just look at the line it says each a statue”

and then the line break continues on of all and these popplers mark space and they have a lifespan some of the popplers in the subactic region according to my very limited research have lifespan of 70 to 100 years but some can have a lifespan of up to 200 and they can trap snow and can increase soil moisture and this means it can warm the soil and reduce permit frost which means therefore that it's good for growth for all kinds of things

for me the line I am not my anguish is a deeply powerful one

and we're not given the emotional journey in terms of what it meant to get here it's inferred but somehow in the looking at a tree we see that each tree is stunned by its own capacity for survival and there we hear the conversation between the line I am not my anguish and the emotional reckoning with what it means to not be your anguish each stunned by its own capacity for survival is what we're told about the trees by that tiny school yard

somehow the tiny school yard makes me think too of what it means to learn what it means to grow what it means to relearn and what it might mean to be reeducated in a way that is true to survival to self-deflourishing this is a poem that's so intelligent about that which depletes a person in their life and that which undermines and nations survival through settler colonialism through ongoing colonization and here what we have as a poem that is looking locally that is looking at what is growing

looking at the self-to and looking at what might be the possibility of flourish the brilliant writer Hennie Fabdure Keep wrote a blurb about Billy Ray Bellcourt

and I thought that was one of the most insightful things I've ever read about Billy Ray Bellcourt's writing

I've been reading him ever since he started publishing, I love his work and what Hennie Fabdure Keep's engagement with the writing makes me think is to ask what is the truth in this writing, the truth that is conveyed to us with the vehicle of nostalgia so the imagery goes from the mother's house to looking outside to the role of poppers and then to reflection and sadness I was so sad all the time and wondering if this was from the famous poem The Winter of his life

and this reorientation of thinking that occurs I'm all looking at the window it seems to me this is grounded by what's being observed

“and the truth is that there's an engagement with Jeff that is not the death of occupation”

of being unsettled from your own indigenous land it is an engagement with a safe imagination of death it isn't that death is a resolution but one day I too will be buried beneath snow as what he says you can hear the clarity and perhaps the hesitation and the commitment to not being misunderstood by saying it isn't that death is a resolution but then there's the change but one day I too will be buried beneath snow

and death is a comfort not because it's a resolution this isn't a poem of despair

this is a poem that's spoken in a voice that knows how to contain its own sadness which might have felt like an experience of ongoing death and that it can find ways of looking at safety and deep psychological containment and some distance as well I used to think but I was wrong this poem says the past tense is evoked I saw the whole world and still ached from my childhood which was half mystery, half almond

“you get the sense of such struggle and the truth that's being wrestled with I think is that the truth of sadness and trauma”

can be looked at sometimes through something that might be an embrace of flourishing this clearly has come with great struggle and not just personal struggle but civic struggle nation struggle finding a way to think what does it mean to live with my own voice, with my own sexuality, with my own indigenous identity in the midst of an environment that has been so systematized against these things and has been so organized against it. I am not my anguish he declares what an extraordinary line

and then all of that is brought into one day I too will be buried beneath snow if you look at the poem the very very final line is just three words this explains everything but that's not the complete sentence it's the complete final line but there's a modifier in the line before somehow line break this explains everything so the generosity of this somehow it brings us into wonder I think and possibility, the strangeness of this moment the final sentence of the final poem of this brilliant book by Billy Ray Bellcourt

“the book is called the idea of an entire life is this somehow this explains everything”

it's exquisite it's filled with wonder it's filled with the possibility of flourishing and it alerts us to what can be seen sometimes in the weather enforced containment of winter so back to go by Billy Ray Bellcourt because it's the coldest December on record I haven't left my mother's house in over a week I love how simple it is to live right now it's so rarely is how small and inconsequential my desires are which rarely are

it would be easy to continue on in this way hemmed in on all sides by bright light at last lord the whiteness of the world doesn't frighten me at last lord I am not my anguish outside the window a row of popplers sway at the edge of a tiny school yard each a statue of all each stunned by his own capacity for survival

but I was wrong I saw the whole world and still acheed from my childhood which was half mystery, half omen

“it isn't that death is a resolution but one day I too will be buried beneath snow”

somehow this explains everything

so back to go by Billy Ray Bellcourt appears in the idea of an entire life

published in 2025 by Beacon Press thanks to them for permission to use this poem

“and to Frederick Court Wright of the Permissions Company”

Poetry and bound is Andrea Pruvo, Carlisthenoni, Jarrow Chen, Sparrow Murray, Chris Hagle, Bill Sigmund and me, Rodrigo Tuma

our music is composed and provided by Gotham Shrikishan and Blue Doubt Sessions these episodes were made in New York City on Unceded Lennapiland

“special thanks to Wilso and Neyvian and Adam Morelle at Digital Island Studios in Manhattan”

thanks as well to Frederick Court Wright of the Permissions Company Poetry and bound is an independent nonprofit production of the Unbeing Project founded and led by Christopher this season of Poetry and bound is made possible by a grant from the Henry Lewis Foundation our other founding partners include the Leana Foundation, the Bideal Foundation and Engaging the Census Foundation Poetry and bound would be nothing without the listening community

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