North End Love Songs

Winner of the 2013 Governor General's Literary Award for Poetry

For Katherena Vermette, Winnipeg's North End is a neighbourhood of colourful birds, stately elms, and always wily rivers. It is where a brother's disappearance is trivialized by local media and police because he is young and aboriginal. It is also where young girls share secrets, movies, cigarettes, Big Gulps and stories of love–where a young mother full of both maternal trepidation and joy watches her small daughters as they play in the park.