The Dialogues: The Song of Francis Pegahmagabow

May 21, 2024
144 pages | 978-1-989496-91-6

**Winner of the 2024 VMI Betsy Warland Between Genres Award**

In The Dialogues: The Song of Francis Pegahmagabow, award-winning author Armand Garnet Ruffo brings to life not only the story of the famed WWI Indigenous sniper, but also the complexities of telling Indigenous stories. From Wasauksing (Parry Island) to the trenches of WWI to the stage, Ruffo moves seamlessly through time in these poems, taking the reader on a captivating journey through Pegahmagabow’s story and onto the creation of Sounding Thunder, the opera based on his life. Throughout, Ruffo uses the Ojibwe concept of two-eyed seeing, which combines the strengths of western and Indigenous ways of knowing, and invites the reader to do the same, particularly through the inclusion of the Anishinaabemowin language within the collection. These are poems that challenge western conventions of thinking, that celebrate hope and that show us a new way to see the world.

Reviews

The Dialogues by Armand Garnet Ruffo (S'more Books Instagram, 28/09/2024)
“A powerful work of art, history, and social reform – holding a mirror up to institutional racism, individual racism, and how folks still rise above it in pursuit of being a good person.”

The Dialogues: The Song of Francis Pegahmagabow (Sarah Hailstone, Sarah Hailstone, 07/09/2024)
"An important collection of poetry for Canlit in cracking open a traditional narrative placeholder of nation-building, lyrically and with experimental storytelling, of an Indigenous lens on war that has been absent in a Canadian consciousness."

Interviews

The Dialogues: The Song of Francis Pegahmagabow (Hollay Ghadery, New Books Network, 06/12/2024)
"These are poems that challenge western conventions of thinking, that celebrate hope and that show us a new way to see the world. "

rob mclennan : 2024 VERSeFest interviews: Armand Garnet Ruffo (rob mclennan, periodicities, 25/11/2024)
"I try not to repeat myself, and in that regard I’m very conscious of genre. That said, I never set out to explore a particular kind of form. Each project takes its own shape."

Articles

2024 Spring Preview: Short Fiction and Poetry (Attila Berki; Cassandra Drudi; Andrew Woodrow-Butcher, Quill & Quire, 17/02/2024)
Lovely to see Armand Garnet Ruffo on the Quill & Quire Spring Preview for Short Fiction and Poetry!

Excerpt

Click here to read an excerpt of The Dialogues: The Song of Francis Pegahmagabow.

About the Author

Armand Garnet Ruffo is an Anishinaabe writer from Treaty #9 territory in northern Ontario. A recipient of an Honourary Life Membership Award from the League of Canadian Poets and the Latner Griffin Writers’ Trust Poetry Prize, he is recognized as a major contributor to both Indigenous literature and Indigenous literary scholarship in Canada. His publications Norval Morrisseau: Man Changing into Thunderbird (2014) and Treaty # (2019) were finalists for Governor General’s Literary Awards. He teaches at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario.

Other Titles by This Author

Grey Owl: The Mystery of Archie Belaney, A New Edition (2021)

At Geronimo's Grave (2021)

TREATY # (2019)