IN THIS STELLAR DEBUT COLLECTION, Girl running, by Métis poet Diana Hope Tegenkamp, disappearances, perpetual flights, river walks, shadowy descents and miraculous returns connect daily living and mortality, social realities and ancient histories, surfaces and subterranean depths.

The narrative weaves between the present, with the poet caring for her mother in the palliative stages of her life, and the past, with a searching eye for the absent Métis father and the brutal effects of Canada’s colonial history.

“A poignant journey of a mother’s life
And a daughter’s loss
Diana tells gentle stories about her mother
sings her beautiful songs
Mahka a’yimiho, a’yimiho
A’yimiho kah puktinaht
A’iyimiho”
- Maria Campbell, award-winning author and filmmaker

“Girl running leads us through grief's secret landscapes— she sprints the mother field all the way across centuries home— where language breaks into wavelength, space collapses into generosity and ‘longing is no longer longing but something else.’”
- Jennifer Still, author of Girlwood and Comma, winner of the Landsdowne Prize for Poetry.