Atlantic Books Poem of the Month

Double Stringing: Métis
by Michelle Porter

fiddlers, the old-timers,
say you could tell their music

by the double-stringing technique
two rows parallel strings

paddle and canoe travelling through
music that never did fit on the map

not the way they like
to make those maps

but they travelled on those rivers
playing two strings at once

plucked at the bottom two strings
of the fiddle

and the other strings sounded
with the melody on accented beats

hard to tell a new tune from an old one
sometimes depended who was making it

their own older players take new songs
add the double stringing the uneven

phrasing make it old-style
make it sound like it’s been around

since the first Métis got to singing
and dancing in the teepees by the

carts in the log houses young
players can take an old tune and

straighten it out make it sound
like some shining dark-eyed

Métis kid with all the talent made
the song for the next session

Songs going back and forth straightened
out and made crooked dancing

from one string to the other balancing
on two strings at once least

that’s what they say

Approaching Fire
Michelle Porter

ABOUT THE BOOK: In Approaching Fire, Michelle Porter embarks on a quest to find her great-grandfather, the Métis fiddler and performer Léon Robert Goulet. Through musicology, jigs and reels, poetry, photographs, and the ecology of fire, Porter invests biography with the power of reflective ingenuity, creating a portrait which expands beyond documentation into a private realm where truth meets metaphor.

Winner of The Miramichi Reader's 2020 Most Promising Author Award

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Michelle Porter is a Red River Métis poet, journalist, and editor. She holds degrees in journalism, folklore, and geography (PhD). Her academic research and creative work have been focused on home, Métis mobility, and the changing nature of our relationship to land. She’s won awards for her work in poetry and journalism, and has been published in literary journals, newspapers, and magazines across the country. She lives in St. John’s.

Established in 1973, BREAKWATER BOOKS was founded on the principle of preserving the unique culture and stories of Newfoundland and Labrador and the Maritime provinces. They publish Canadian literary fiction, commercial fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and children’s books.