I Am YEG Arts: Daniel Poitras

Poet Daniel Poitras best describes his work as ​“vicious Native poetry”, using humour, sarcasm, sincerity, story, and truth to defang stereotypes, racism, and complacency. Daniel’s words challenge audiences and pry open their minds to new perspectives. A longtime participant at open mic events, a featured reader, and with work published in several literary journals, Daniel is currently working with the monthly poetry reading series, The Nightingale, to bring poetry to the masses. In this week’s I Am YEG Arts feature, we spoke with Daniel about the themes he tackles in his poetry, who is inspiring him right now, his advice for aspiring poets, and what audiences can expect by checking out The Nightingale poetry series. 

What drew you to poetry? What are some of the themes you like to explore in your work? 

What initially drew me to poetry was a sense of being broken and lonely. In high school poetry was a big thing; everybody was writing diaries that rhymed, and we called it poetry. I’ve always taken to writing and I got into poetry because I was going to Grant MacEwan [now known as MacEwan University] and I met this wonderful professor named Jannie Edwards who is the reason for all this. 

My favorite subject matter would be sadness and depression – just your general existential attitudes. I’m in a unique position growing up Native, but half-breed, which means that I wasn’t accepted by that culture, and I was accepted by this culture. It gave me a perspective that’s unique. Because of that I write a lot of my themes on Indigenous culture and the reaction to it. Typically, when you hear Indigenous poetry, it’s either in celebration of the culture or it’s mourning of the loss of it. Those are your two common themes. I do have a little bit of both of those, but for the most part, most of my Indigenous poetry is confronting what people are saying about our culture. My work tends to center on what I’m calling ​“vicious Native poetry”. It sells what I’m trying to do. 

And how do you think poetry as an art form lends itself to talking about some of these heavier subjects? 

Essays and stories have a defined form: this is the format, this is how you have to write this thing or else it’s not that thing anymore. With poetry, there are forms, but we’ve spent a long time deconstructing those forms. It’s so open that anything can be poetry, and I think that’s the beauty of the form. For example, I could take, say, a police confessional and alter it, turning it into a heartbreaking poem. It’s a poem about real life and real struggles. You can take out a few lines, add a little imagery, add a metaphor or a little bit of simile and boom, you’ve got a great poem. I think that’s what allows poetry to be so subversive. It can fit into any space in any shape, at any time. 

Who’s someone inspiring you right now, and why? 

Currently, my favourite poet is Kim Mannix. She’s got a book coming out on October 28^th called Confirm Humanity. It’s a great collection of poetry that has to do with her fears, her phobias, and like myself, we look at the darker side of life and ask, how can I make this art and how can I force that upon everybody else? She does that, just like myself, although I don’t pull punches. She masterfully moves into the lines and in the spaces and out of the spaces so beautifully that you don’t realize she’s talking about the heaviest of topics. Her elegance and her way of delivering is so wonderful. When I read her poetry, the best way I can describe it is that it’s like a gentle massacre. 

Tell us more about The Nightingale poetry reading series. How did this series get its start and what can audiences expect at a Nightingale event?

Being a board member, the Nightingale was the brainchild of Jean-Jacques Chateauneuf. Jean-Jacques is an incredibly devoted and excitable poet. He does a lot of children’s poetry, and he does that in front of adults, which puts him on a whole different level. He created The Nightingale I believe as an homage to the raving poets of the late 90s/​early 2000s. That’s important because it’s hosted at the Kasbar Lounge, which is just below Yanni’s Taverna Greek Restaurant, and it’s where the Raving Poets originally started. The Raving Poets was a great open mic that had a live band that would vibe to whatever you were reading. Jean-Jacques has taken that idea and he does like a little music interstitial intro before everybody goes up. So, you could have Beyoncé’s ​“Single Ladies” as you walk up to the mic. It feels a little like a club or wrestling event with the intros.

The event is easy-going and it’s got that kind of bar/​club feel, which I like because this feels like when I was in my 20s going to the bar, but I’m now in my 40s and the club ends at 9:00 pm and I can go home and be in bed. The atmosphere brings a lot of diverse and interesting poets. You never know what you’re going to get, but you know you’re going to have a good time.

What would your advice be to poets/​writers looking to get their start in Edmonton?

My advice would be to find open mics and go to all the open mics you mentally and emotionally can get to. It’s where you’re going to discover incredible performances that you may never see again. There are poets that I’ve heard perform that make the art form incredible, and then it breaks my heart to know that they gave up the art and they’re not doing poetry anymore. But now that performance lives on in my head and in my heart. You don’t get that unless you go to these open mics. The featured poets and the like are great to see but you know what you’re going to get. The open mic is so raw and there’s so much talent, love, and fear. Sometimes you’ll get a poet two lines in, nerves get to them, and they have to walk off, and then with the encouragement of the crowd they come back up and finish the poem. There’s some beautiful humanity in that.

Another piece of advice that is just as important is to respect the time. If it’s two minutes, be two minutes, don’t be five. Always keep your audience wanting more, because as an audience member we have an internal clock – we know when it’s over two minutes, and by three minutes we’ve checked out and we’re just waiting for the voices to stop so we can clap.

Tell us a little about what you’re currently working on or hoping to explore next.

I am currently working on a manuscript I’ve been working on for 20 years. When I first got pulled into the scene by Jannie Edwards, I started writing poetry and it was Indigenous poetry because she would say write what you know. When I started writing poetry I was a very angry individual, writing very angry Native poetry, challenging the status quo, challenging anybody that wasn’t Indigenous. And over time I left the community for like a decade. I’ve come back and I’m now trying to rework all those old poems into something that I prefer today, where it’s more sarcastic, with a little bit of sardonic humour to it, and it’s less angry and more about illuminating the problem. There’s a lot of Native humour that tends to skew a little dark because if you don’t laugh, you cry. I have the contract from NeWest Press, so, in the year 2028 when all this is burned out and we’re living by mutants and fires that are in barrels, I’ll put my book out!

And what I hope to do in the future? Maybe steer away from some Indigenous poetry for a little bit and try to write something that isn’t Indigenous-based and see how I feel about it.

Also, if you are a fan and want to see me perform, I will be participating in an event for Calgary’s Stroll of Poets Festival (September 6 – 7). The event, Turtle Island Collective Presents: Dapper Dan & The Whole Damn Boondoggle, will be at Rosso Inglewood on September 7^th at 12:15 pm. Saturday is all open mic events, and Sunday is where the other events are happening which I’m part of. For anybody who’s interested, come out to Calgary for The Dapper Dan Experience and all the other wonderful events with wonderful poets.

About Daniel Poitras

Daniel Poitras is a half-breed poet from the Paul First Nation. Currently residing in Edmonton, he writes vicious Native poetry. He has been published in The Home and Away anthology (House of Blue Skies, 2009), The Malahat Review, Grain Magazine, The Polyglot, in Poetry Moves on Transit program and has been a feature in the long-running Olive Reading series.