“These days serious poets aim for the bone” writes Anna Marie Sewell. They do, and so does she. Writing surface poetry is not Sewell’s style. In Fifth World Drum she goes deep and takes her reader with her. Recounting her experiences with identity, her search for culture and spirituality, and work on her craft — poetry — Sewell is not afraid to write about reality.
The “fifth world” is one imagined by the mixed race (Mi’gmaq and Slavic) poet from Edmonton. With so many divisions in the way our world is seen and labeled, first, second, third and a fourth for Indigenous peoples worldwide who have been displaced on their lands and as a result do not fit the models of the first three, Sewell writes of her new world, “why not a fifth one?” True, why not?
Every person in this world has their own world or worlds that they live in; a fifth world is necessary especially if it is one that seeks truth, change, respect and unity the way Sewell does.
In her poem “Garage Sale” Sewell writes of historical injustice with subtlety and style:
if the Pope decides on a garage sale
here are some things I would like you to pick up
if you see them
What follows is a list of things to buy at the Pope’s sale that sadly holds true today and teaches readers about how our world as we know it came to be through the theft of land, belief systems and ways of living: 1) “the sacredness of women” 2) “holy scrolls that didn’t make the official edit” 3) “any old Mayan codex” 4) “bones of people taken over from Turtle Island” 5) “the line that once divided the world.”
“Garage Sale” is about colonialism without naming it. It is about genocide. It is about 500 years of villainy. It is about a division — the Treaty of Tordesillas of 1494 — that was the seed for the many divisions that came after and are here today. It is also about accountability and taking back what originally belongs to different peoples.
In “Pow-wow Notes” Sewell shares her experiences of being mixed race and having light-skinned privilege. Reminiscent of great Metis poet Gregory Scofield in his early works, Sewell shares her experiences of not fitting the stereotype of the Hollywood Indian: dark skin, long black hair, stoic looking. She writes: “but really, where are you from? asks a darker person.” Sewell knows who she is, where she is from and that she belongs. She celebrates with her people and finds:
hard to believe this was an outlaw act
to gather, to circle the drum in time
to the heartbeats pull
to sing life
laughing, slapping hands
embracing cousins from every direction
Sewell’s words take you where she has been. Whether a first-timer or a pow-wow trailblazer, when reading Sewell’s notes on a pow-wow you are with her and “all shades of brown skin pale to dark” and “the memory stamp of our [her] history” and her/the peoples future.
Sewell plays with language (Mi’gmaq, Spanish and Ukranian); writes a lot about the life of a poet; and tells stories of her travels to Korea, Mexico and her Mi’gmaq roots in different parts of what is now known as New Brunswick. My only criticism is of her “Haiku for Social Justice.” The haiku is a style appropriated from Japan that is overdone.
Fifth World Drum is a song, lesson, journalism, historical text and life journal all in one. Sewell’s words do not rest on your skin, they travel your veins and visit your thoughts and swim in your tears and perch on your lips.–Jorge Antonio Vallejos
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