Poetry Friday: E. Pauline Johnston

2017 is a milestone year in Canadian history – July 1st, 2017 will be our 150th birthday! Now obviously Canada has been around in some form or another for well over 150 years. First Nations groups have inhabited the country for thousands of years, and European explorers and settlers have been arriving on Canadian shores for centuries. Still, I can’t refuse an opportunity to celebrate my home country, and to share some much-needed Canadiana with the world!

Canada has been blessed with many talented authors and poets, including many outstanding female creators. One such woman was E. Pauline Johnston. Born in Ontario in 1861, Johnston was the daughter of a Mohawk father and an English mother, whose inter-cultural marriage challenged contemporary social norms. Johnston’s parents encouraged her and her siblings to explore their Aboriginal heritage, which Johnston would later weave into her writings.

Though successful and well-known during her lifetime, Johnston slipped into obscurity after her death;

“It was not until 1961, with commemoration of the centenary of her birth, that Johnson began to be recognized as an important Canadian cultural figure.…

The author Margaret Atwood admitted that she did not study literature by Native authors when preparing Survival: A Thematic Guide to Canadian Literature (1972), her seminal work. At its publication, she had said she could not find Native works. She mused, “Why did I overlook Pauline Johnson? Perhaps because, being half-white, she somehow didn’t rate as the real thing, even among Natives; although she is undergoing reclamation today.”^[16] Atwood’s comments indicated that Johnson’s multicultural identity contributed to her neglect by critics.

 

As Atwood noted, since the late 20th century, Johnson’s writings and performance career have been reevaluated by literary, feminist, and postcolonial critics. They have appreciated her importance as a New Woman and a figure of resistance to dominant ideas about race, gender, Native Rights, and Canada.^[11]:3 The growth in literature written by First Nations people during the 1980s and 1990s has prompted writers and scholars to investigate Native oral and written literary history, to which Johnson made a significant contribution.^{[11]:174″ – Wikipedia}

E. Pauline Johnston was a prolific poet who embraced her Aboriginal, English and Canadian identities, and expressed them through her poetry. I’ll leave you with one of my favourites, Lullaby of the Iroquois. Gently rhythmic, this poem, about a dear little baby who just won’t go to sleep, will touch the hearts of parents everywhere.

 

Little brown baby-bird, lapped in your nest,
Wrapped in your nest,
Strapped in your nest,
Your straight little cradle-board rocks you to rest;
Its hands are your nest;
Its bands are your nest;
It swings from the down-bending branch of the oak;
You watch the camp flame, and the curling grey smoke;
But, oh, for your pretty black eyes sleep is best,—
Little brown baby of mine, go to rest.

 

Little brown baby-bird swinging to sleep,
Winging to sleep,
Singing to sleep,
Your wonder-black eyes that so wide open keep,
Shielding their sleep,
Unyielding to sleep,
The heron is homing, the plover is still,
The night-owl calls from his haunt on the hill,
Afar the fox barks, afar the stars peep,—
Little brown baby of mine, go to sleep.