Heating the Outdoors

by Gill, Marie-Andrée; Miller, Kristen Renee

• ISBN13: 9781771668149
• ISBN10: 1771668148
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2023-03-07
• Publisher: Book*hug Press

Summary

You're the clump of blackened spruce
that lights my gasoline-soaked heart

It's just impossible you won't be back
to quench yourself in my crème-soda
ancestral spirit

Irreverent and transcendent, lyrical and slang, Heating the Outdoors is an endlessly surprising new work from award-winning poet Marie-Andrée Gill.

In these micropoems, writing and love are acts of decolonial resilience. Rooted in Nitassinan, the territory and ancestral home of the Ilnu Nation, they echo the Ilnu oral tradition in Gill's interrogation and reclamation of the language, land, and interpersonal intimacies distorted by imperialism. They navigate her interior landscape—of heartbreak, humor, and, ultimately, unrelenting light—amidst the boreal geography.

Heating the Outdoors describes the yearnings for love, the domestic monotony of post-breakup malaise, and the awkward meeting of exes. As the lines between interior and exterior begin to blur, Gill's poems, here translated by Kristen Renee Miller, become a record of the daily rituals and ancient landscapes that inform her identity not only as a lover, then ex, but also as an Ilnu and Québécoise woman.

Author Biography

Ilnu Nation member Marie-Andrée Gill is the author of Béante, Frayer, and Chauffer le dehors. Two of her books have been translated into English by Kristen Renee Miller, including Spawn and Heating the Outdoors. She hosts the award-winning podcast Laissez-nous raconter: L'histoire crochie (Telling Our Twisted Histories). Gill is a two-time recipient of the Salon du Livre Prize in Poetry and has won two Indigenous Voices Awards, including the Best Published Poetry in French prize for Chauffer le dehors. In 2020, Gill was named Artist of the Year by the Quebec Council of Arts and Letters. Kristen Renee Miller is the managing editor at Sarabande Books. A poet and translator, she is the 2020 winner of the Gulf Coast Prize in Translation and the translator of two books from the French by poet Marie-Andrée Gill: Spawn and Heating the Outdoors. Her work can be found widely, including in POETRY Magazine, The Kenyon Review, DIAGRAM, jubilat, and Best New Poets. She is the recipient of fellowships and awards from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and the American Literary Translators Association. She lives in Louisville, Kentucky.