Rogers, Janet Marie. Peace in Duress. Vancouver: Talon Books, 2012. 128pp.
http://talonbooks.com/books/peace-in-duress
Rogers, Janet Marie. Janet Marie Rogers Stream on Soundcloud. 2013. Web. 3 Jan. 2015.
https://soundcloud.com/janet-marie-rogers
Peace
in Duress is Janet Rogers' fourth poetry
collection available from Talon Books (214). As a recent poet laureate of
Victoria, British Colombia, Rogers hails from the Mohawk-Tuscarora Nations and
engages a staggering range of timely themes such as environmental justice,
First Nations sovereignty and struggles for decolonization, gender and
sexuality, oral traditions (see "Sky Woman Falling" and
"Red-Black" especially), critiques of capitalism and more. This list
is hardly exhaustive and the collection itself resists easy reductions, as hers
is a powerful, edgy voice that simultaneously thunders and soothes, aggravates
and celebrates-- sometimes in the very same breath. Hers is a voice that
thunders as it demands political change—"We want more/And we want it
now"—and she urges readers/listeners to do the same in "Move Like a
Mountain," writing "you better walk loud." Yet even as she
painfully points our eyes to the "Fractures/In the Sacred," and
reminds us that we are, "standing on stolen territories," Rogers likewise
declares that the people are "Singing new songs" and implores the
audience to "Resist the hate/keep praying." Whether she is taking aim
at attacks on the land and tribal sovereignty, or rejoicing in a kiss or other
act of human kindness, Peace in Duress
is overflowing with the spirit of resistance to confining notions of both poetry
and indigeneity.
Skillfully blending images and rhythms
of contemporary urban experiences with Original Instructions and "the
Great Laws of being" (28), Rogers' pages present "Raven/dancing
on fresh concrete" (53) alongside "Visions of medicine/Dropping like
acid on the skin" (38). The poet reminds the People early on in the
collection that "Our greatest asset/is memory" (6) in a colonial
world forcefully urging cultural and spiritual amnesia. Here, Rogers is a
poet-warrior writing from the trenches, bearing witness to the epidemic of
disappeared First Nations women in "Move a Mountain (Walk a Mile in Her
Shoes)," which picks up the discourse of the Walking with Our Sisters
activist campaign as the speaker darkly narrates, "If we could really walk
in her shoes/ [We'd be] running for our lives." The poet later intones,
"Come back," repeating impassioned phrases meant to return the
disappeared women and heal both self and community, a rebalancing poetics that
links with another piece in the collection, "Giving a Shit." Here, in
the second to last poem, the reader finds Rogers' telling account of the Idle
No More movement, particularly a description of a round
dance addressing Canadian Prime Minister Harper's failure to address Chief
Theresa Spence's (Attawapiskat) request to meet with First Nations peoples to
discuss the government's failures to honor the treaties and the earth. Rogers
writes, "Have you nothing to say" and warns that, "The movement
has just begun."
But Peace
in Duress is far more than a catalogue of violence against peoples and the
earth, for even as her poems offer harsh testimonies, "telling the
stories, willingly," these are also pages filled with sensuality and love.
For example, in "The Sexual Revolution Will Be Televised," Rogers
speaks of the rejection of colonial shame surrounding sexuality and the
reclamation of positive conceptions of erotic, what she calls "the
rez-erection." Here, the very personal is very political as, "we can
have power over our own bodies/Imagine: we can have authority over our own
skin." The book is likewise brimming with celebration and "powerful
pleasure" (85) from front to back, resulting in a collection centered on
(re)balancing and forging connections even in the midst of so much disruption
and disconnection.
Rogers' rhythms pulse on the page, and I
was immediately drawn to the musicality of her repetition and galloping
cadences, like in "Three-Day Road" and "Forty Dayz," where
"dirt doesn't want to stay down" and "welcome winds
whip." Even the earth itself moves to the rhythm of the poet's voice, as
"this land is my favorite song that skips at my favourite part." For
these reasons, it is no wonder that Janet Rogers identifies as a spoken-word
artist and maintains an active Soundcloud page devoted to experimental
vocal-musical performances (Rogers, "Janet Marie Rogers Stream on
Soundcloud"). Although her digital poems unarguably complement any reading
of Peace in Duress-- sometimes even
offering exciting, alternate versions of the written text-- they also function
as stand-alone works in their own right, suggesting that one element of Rogers'
activism as a poet is ultimately structural in nature since she not only resists
easy binaries in her content but also in terms of genre as she fluidly moves
from the page to the air. Some of Rogers' performances of poems in the book
utilize microbeats that sound like anxious heartbeats or drops of rain hitting
the sidewalk, but all along the focus still remains on her voice and the
materiality of language itself. Many of Rogers' spoken works turn to reverb and
delay vocal effects (see especially "Love and Protection"), which
emphasize and elongate critical lines and syllables, creating haunting and, at
times, chaotic and dreamlike, sonic atmospheres. Such repetitions reinforce the
lingering nature of Rogers' content, where issues like violence targeting First
Nations women and the destruction of nature are ongoing, or in other places
where the listener is made to dwell on a single word in all of its sonic
permutations. In this way, Rogers as an artist is a master of echoes, both on
the page and in performance, where her poems talk back to the listener/reader
as well as to each other, and necessary visions retrace their steps, audibly stumbling
into one another again and again.
In these ways, Janet Rogers' Peace in Duress and her accompanying
spoken performances on Soundcloud come together to form a sonic tour-de-force
of contemporary indigenous resistance. They will appeal to readers and listeners
interested in works that are both experimental and at the same time accessible,
as well as audiences eager to engage narratives of survival, resistance, and
strength from an unwavering voice that isn't afraid to speak the truth no
matter the cost.
Patricia
Killelea, University of California, Davis