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Last Modified: November 7, 2022
Uche Umezurike interviews Matthew James Weigel graphic
Uche Umezurike interviews Matthew James Weigel

Author image courtesy of the author.

Matthew James Weigel is a Dene and Métis poet and artist born and raised in Edmonton. Currently pursuing a PhD in English at the University of Alberta, he holds a Bachelor of Science in Biological Sciences. He is the designer for Moon Jelly House Press and his words and art have been published by people like Arc Poetry Magazine, Book*Hug, The Polyglot, and The Mamawi Project. Matthew is a Writers’ Trust Dayne Ogilvie Prize finalist, National Magazine Award finalist, Nelson Ball Prize finalist, Cécile E. Mactaggart award winner, and winner of both the 2020 Vallum Chapbook Award and 2021 bpNichol Chapbook Award for his chapbook “It Was Treaty / It Was Me”. His debut full-length collection Whitemud Walking recently won the Alcuin Society Award for book design, and is available now from Coach House Books.

Uche Umezurike: Congrats on your latest work, Matthew. In Whitemud Walking, you stress the theme of our relationship to land and people and the terms on which this relationship is founded. How long did it take to write the book, and what was the process like for you?

Matthew James Wiegel: It took exactly three years from the day I wanted to write it to the day we sent it to the printer. It was a long journey! I was adjusting things pretty much up until the last possible minute. I learned a lot about how I work during the process. Most of which was research, lots of reading and pouring over maps and photographs. When I was working in a lab, I made it a habit to take notes on everything, which is something I kept up when I visited the archives. Some early advice on this project was to write down not just the details but how they made me feel. Some of the work that ended up in the book came directly from those sorts of notes.

Part of your goal with Whitemud Walking was to act as a “witness” to the legacy of settler colonial violence and the plunder of Indigenous life, land, and culture. When did you realize that you wanted to write this book?

I was taking English classes upgrading to get into an MSc and I attended a workshop at Bruce Peel Special Collections where I saw the Treaty No. 6 parchment that is in the University of Alberta’s possession, and I had just had so many questions about it. Where was it printed and when, how many copies were printed? Why did the University have it? When I was growing up, my dad always made sure I knew and was proud that our ancestors signed treaty. So, learning about treaty was always something I had been interested in. When I sat in that workshop and saw the parchment on the table, it really felt like the perfect research project had presented itself. So, I changed my plans and did an MA instead. But obviously it’s far more than a research project. Treaty isn’t something that can be contained in that sort of scope. And it was in coming to understand that idea, that the book came together.

Your book strikes me as an intervention to decolonize the archives, though I am drawn to the concept of resistance historiography, which frames your poetics. Could you tell us more about this concept?

I think, if you start with the premise that all types of historical writings have been written by people with particular positions, particular goals, particular methods, then it follows that not all histories serve everyone. And when it comes to teasing stories out of the archive, you’re looking at a recording of history that served a very particular purpose. So, for example, going into Library and Archives Canada and encountering a file box full of documents that record the dispossession of my family, it’s important to centre the personal. Especially in a system that is designed to be as impersonal as possible! And when that system is an oppressive one, and it’s so large and complicated, even accessing that information is a form of resistance. Putting the numbers and dates and figures down on paper and pulling it from an archival space is an act of resistance. Telling these stories is an act of resistance. So, thinking critically about that process, and sharing that process with people is a type of historiography – it’s a story about how our own history gets written. The other thing I’ll add is that historical records are not just recorded on papers in file boxes. History is recorded in the land and in the body, it’s recorded in the stories that we share with each other. And so, centring those stories is also an act of resistance against the western academic practice of History.

What made you decide that the hybrid genre was the best structure for your book? Was there anything you found challenging with it?

This is a tough question! Because the book design and visuals were such a central component of the book, I approached the book in the same way I approach a big art project or artist’s book. When I work on a larger or complex creative project like that, I tend to start off with a vision of the end product. But it’s kind of like an intuition or feeling of the visual idea I’m trying to accomplish more than a clear picture of what it will look like. Then I basically work backwards from that and try to get as close as possible. Sometimes that means big changes in the process because the path I’m taking isn’t working, and sometimes it just means compromise because the vision is outside of the scope of what I’m capable of. I don’t know if any of that really answers the question. I think the story I’m trying to tell has a lot of layers to it, and poetry and art are the tools I have to work through the telling of that story. I think that I’m helped by the fact that poetry and art aren’t limiting in the same way that most genres are. If anything, I think the book is an artistic medium, rather than a vehicle for genre. So, I think ultimately that’s where the challenges are. Reining that vision in when there are no limits or constraints to the medium. And I guess, calling it finished and not just working on it forever!

Your book has a remarkable intricacy in the arrangements of text, photographs, and document reproductions. How did you select the photographs? How did you approach the layout of your book?

Thank you so much, Uche. I think this book has a lot of moving pieces that I really didn’t know how they were all going to fit together. Honestly, I give a lot of the credit for that to my partner Nisha. The central poem that winds through the text, “Whitemud Walking,” was originally just a single long poem. But Nisha pointed it out and was like, you should break this up and spread it around. And that was this huge conceptual leap for the work that she saw very clearly. That gave me a set of connective tissues for the rest of the work. The layout on the other hand was definitely a long labor of love! I can get really lost in InDesign and just spend hours adjusting things.

This section in your book where the speaker says, “This is where I/learn how to live, with myself and with what I know,” simply transfixes me with its beauty and resonance. What places do you find yourself returning to in Edmonton?

The book really leans heavily on many days spent walking through Whitemud Creek, so that’s a place obviously very special to me. But it’s the everyday joy of being in this place that I think means so much to me. The university campus. Old Strathcona. The river valley. I live just on the old fort hill trail where my ancestors walked to the river since time immemorial. And so, to live here in this place, walking in their footsteps, is a great privilege.

Uche Umezurike is an assistant professor of English at the University of Calgary. An alumnus of the International Writing Program (USA), Umezurike is a co-editor of Wreaths for Wayfarers, an anthology of poems. He is the author of Wish Maker (Masobe Books, 2021) and Double Wahala, Double Trouble (Griots Lounge Publishing, 2021). His poetry collection, there’s more, is forthcoming from the University of Alberta Press.

Whitemud Walking

Matthew James Weigel (CA)

Published: Apr 12, 2022 by Coach House Books
ISBN: 9781552454411
Double Wahala, Double Trouble

Uchechukwu Peter Umezurike (CA)

Published: Nov 26, 2021 by Griots Lounge Publishing Canada
ISBN: 9781777688400