Home and dislocation
Spruce to Cedar
by Lasänmą
Picton: Brick Books, 2026
$23.95 / 9781771316705
Reviewed by Joanna Streetly
*
Spruce to Cedar is a debut collection of poems that anchors readers in the poet’s childhood home of Dakwakada, or Haines Junction, Yukon. Lasänmą, who is part of the Champagne and Aishihik First Nation and a member of the Wolf Clan, also goes by the English name, Mariah MacDonald.
In keeping with the title of the collection, these poems evoke the poet’s family and home landscape of spruce and willow, rabbit and moose, blueberry and fireweed. There is also comfort in the multitude of family members—aunties, uncles, grandparents, cuzzins and siblings—white vans dubbed “war pony,” as well as food staples: Red Rose tea, moose stew, hooligan [eulachon] eggs, and pilot bread with margarine and jam. Lasänmą sprinkles the poems with Southern Tutchone and Dene words, further building the aural landscape.
The collection is expansive and ungrouped. Some poems are titled; others are marked by thumbnail images of mountains or cityscapes. These image-titled poems may or may not be extended sections of the titled poems; there is no table of contents by which to confirm this.
Early in the book Lasänmą recalls her family begging for improved living conditions instead of the reality: “taps that don’t bring water,” an outhouse, and substandard mold-ridden housing—“half-ass jobs”—thanks to a housing policy that requires each house to be at occupancy within the first year of funding. This is a harsh (and ongoing) reality for Indigenous people in Canada. Yet these early poems, like “Aku 2004,” also build warmth and an atmosphere of happy reminiscence:
sitting on the rickety boards we eat, [sandwiches]
gently placing pieces into the mouths of our teddy bears
while we watch Ata working on a truck outside
radio blaring behind him
bepsi jingles & weather reports
The timeline of this collection is partially lineal—the child of the poems gradually becoming an adult and leaving home—but the poems also move between past and present, hovering between a longing to return to childhood situations, and the intense “isolation & loneliness that comes with being ndn,” as Lasänmą relocates to the Lower Mainland to study at UBC. Her homesickness is pronounced and deeply felt.
Spruce to Cedar is also punctuated by third-person letters-to-self, or aphoristic quotes, such as:
Lasänmą exclaims:
There may be days when I don’t feel like living,
but at least oranges exist.
As Lasänmą struggles with the loneliness and displacement, not to mention the physicality of the Vancouver weather—“i’ve never been this soaked in my life”—she longs to return to the comparative ease and sense of belonging that accompanied her childhood. At the same time she overcomes the temptation to view her early life through an overly-sentimental lens.
While some of the poems are almost picture-perfect in their representation of loving relatives and childhood innocence, others hint at underlying troubles, such as the trauma and tragic loss of her grandmother’s home to a house fire. A poem that begins, “Small town life is beautiful,” also warns against catching the attention of the Kwä́ntsì Mèn: “youʼll be the hottest topic of the week / isolated ensnared monitored / eight beady eyes watching your every move.” And in a 2023 letter, Lasänmą writes with compassion for her anxiety-plagued 2009 self:
your brain is on fire, you sit up late into the night looking out your dirty window to the moon. you let fear turn electric, running down your pitchforked veins, sending goosebumps down your arms & down your spine. the tv says you’re going to die in three years, the world is going to open up & swallow you whole & there’s nothing you can do to stop it.
Trips home from Vancouver do little to alleviate Lasänmą’s sense of dislocation, and she writes of feeling like a tourist in her own home: “i take pictures of the cabin at Łu Ghą as though iʼve never stepped foot inside / as though i didnʼt grow up there / as though i never learned how to tie my shoes in the kitchen.” Given her feelings of alienation while in Vancouver, this makes her wonder: does anywhere feel like home? In “Happy” Lasänmą describes happiness as a kind of wishful thinking: “i tell myself i’ll be happier in the city / i tell myself i’ll be happier back home.“ And this disembodied state continues to build, culminating in one of the later (untitled) poems:
the truth is i donʼt know how long iʼm going to last under colonized institutions.
surrounded by people whoʼll never understand my mindset,
or who frown when i swear in Dän Kʼe. like speaking a dying language
isnʼt as cool as speaking from a settler tongue. the truth is iʼm tired of
sweat sticking to skin & the season changing without the temperature
dropping like iʼm stuck in a forever summer, like iʼm in limbo. the truth
is i havenʼt seen my ancestors in almost three years now, & iʼve never felt
more lost. the truth is iʼm still the little girl i was twenty years ago, & i
want to go home. the truth is i donʼt have a home anymore, the blue walls
of childhood no longer mine to claim. the truth is everything has gone to
shit, & i wish to be an impressionable child. i wish Ä́tà was still alive &
well. i wish to see Ä́tsųa ̨ & Ä́tsía once more. i wish it was 2004 & nothing
bad has happened.
Some of the description in Spruce to Cedar leans toward the overused beat-of-my-heart variety, a lack of attention that is inconsistent with other details which are original and striking. This made for a slightly uneven reading experience, one that could have benefitted from better editorial support, both with shaping the collection and issues of syntax. Overall, however, the reader is immersed in rich landscapes and with poems that evoke the loneliness of displacement, the search for home and happiness, as well as a powerful sense of oral tradition: stories and memories told and retold with listeners in mind.
*
Joanna Streetly is the published author of five books. Her writing can be found in Best Canadian Poetry 2024, Best Canadian Essays 2017, and many anthologies and literary magazines. She has lived in unceded Tla-o-qui-aht territory for over thirty years and was the inaugural Tofino Poet Laureate. Her 2025 poetry collection, All of Us Hidden, was reviewed by Steven Ross Smith. [Editor’s note: Joanna reviewed a recent volume by Brandi Bird for BCR.]
*
The British Columbia Review
Interim Editors: Trevor Marc Hughes (nonfiction), Brett Josef Grubisic (fiction and poetry)
Publisher: Richard Mackie
Formerly The Ormsby Review, The British Columbia Review is an online book review and journal service for BC writers and readers. The Advisory Board now consists of Jean Barman, Wade Davis, Robin Fisher, Barry Gough, Hugh Johnston, Kathy Mezei, Patricia Roy, and Graeme Wynn. Provincial Government Patron (since September 2018): Creative BC. Honorary Patron: Yosef Wosk. Scholarly Patron: SFU Graduate Liberal Studies. The British Columbia Review was founded in 2016 by Richard Mackie and Alan Twigg.
“Only connect.” – E.M. Forster