At Geronimo's Grave, reprint
Armand Garnet Ruffo
September 7, 2021
116 pages | ISBN 978-1-989496-35-0
**Winner of the Archibald Lampman Award**
From soldiers parachuting into battle to children jumping from a swing, the name Geronimo echoes through time. But the reality of the great Apache warrior's fate is little remembered. In At Geronimo's Grave, award-winning poet Armand Garnet Ruffo uses Geronimo's life as a metaphor for the lives of the many downtrodden and abandoned Indigenous people on this continent.
With affection and concern, Ruffo considers the lives and experiences of those who struggle to make their way in a world that has no place for them. Once feared for his great prowess, Geronimo, the resistance fighter, was reduced to wearing a top hat and riding in an early Ford Model T car, a grim caricature of assimilation into the dominant culture. The bitter irony of this fate echoes through the personal poems in At Geronimo's Grave. This collection is a love letter to a people trapped in the slow-moving vehicle of another culture that is taking them nowhere.
Excerpt
Read an excerpt from At Geronimo's Grave.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Armand Garnet Ruffo was born in Chapleau, northern Ontario, and is a band member of the Chapleau (Fox Lake) Cree First Nation. A recipient of a Honorary Life Membership Award from the League of Canadian Poets, he is recognized as a major contributor to both contemporary Indigenous literature and Indigenous literary scholarship in Canada. His publications include Norval Morrisseau: Man Changing Into Thunderbird (2014) and Treaty # (2019), both finalists for Governor General’s Literary Awards. In 2020, he was awarded the Latner Writers’ Trust Poetry Prize in recognition of his work. Ruffo teaches at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario.
Other Titles by This Author
Dialogues (2024)
TREATY # (2019)
Grey Owl: The Mystery of Archie Belaney, revised edition (2021)