Bearmen Descend Upon Gimli

Bearmen Descend Upon Gimli is a contemporary myth told in lyric form. The poems in this collection follow Raymond Northwind, a past-middle-aged Odawa guy, who happens to be the icemaker and custodian for the Peter Glint Memorial Curling Club. Fate finds Northwind in his Gimli, Manitoba exile and because of it, he brings forth a semi-supernatural curling team of Cree “bearmen” to face off against the best teams from around Canada for a large and prestigious prize. Below the surface of these poems there are meditations on the role of ceremony, the place of sport in culture, the spirit of the land, and those that come to inhabit it. This work inhabits the intersection of cultures in Canada as facilitated by what is often seen as a quintessentially Canadian sport, curling, in a place that is the geographic midpoint of Canada.