Glass Lodge, The

The Glass Lodge: 20^th Anniversary Edition
by John Brady McDonald
Published by Shadowpaw Press Reprise
Review by Shelley A. Leedahl
$34.99 ISBN 9781998273119

As the name suggests, Shadowpaw Press Reprise is in the business of publishing previously-released books, often with edits and other improvements. The Glass Lodge: 20^th Anniversary Edition, a holds-no-punches poetry collection by Saskatchewan writer John Brady McDonald is one such book. First published in 2004 by Kegedonce Press, the Néhiyawak-Métis writer/artist/actor/musician/historian—yes, he has a lot going on—from Muskeg Lake Cree Nation and the Mistawasis Nehiyawak has given the new hardcover edition a spit-shine, with “frank, fascinating insight[s]” into the poems’ angsty geneses, and several images of the initial handwritten pieces.

McDonald’s been recognized for both his writing and artwork. His nonfiction book Carrying it Forward: ESSAYS FROM KISTAHPINÂNIHK garnered two Saskatchewan Books Awards in 2024, and his art’s been shown internationally. This multi-talented, Queen’s Platinum Jubilee Medal awardee (Saskatchewan), has had an extraordinarily diverse life, ranging from promiscuity and addiction issues to studying at England’s University of Cambridge and presenting his work in Australia.

The book’s told chronologically in four parts—“Emergence,” “Eros,” “Kuskitew Peyesis” and “Renaissance,” and includes a “Denouement.” The poems reach back to McDonald’s difficult teenage years: the first poem in the book was written “in [his] math book, after [he] got in a fight with a white kid at school” and “snapped.” In the second piece, “Carpe,” he writes “My mind is a Latin Mass/chanting to be released” and, in the note below, he reveals that this short piece “was written in black marker on the liner notes of a Metallica cassette.”

Musical influences abound: Nirvana, Jim Morrison (McDonald’s “spiritual mentor”), and the poet’s favourite band, Guns N’ Roses. Of the latter, he confesses that their “music and lyrics were angry enough to serve as an equal frame against which to measure my own.”

This is not your grandmother’s poetry; violence is definitely a theme here, including gang violence. In “Colours,” about being “jumped-in” to a gang, we read “Fists and feet pummel me/blood springs from my lips/again and again/The pain, the chain/across my back.” Writing authentically about street experiences like this would have an impact on young readers, and I’m not surprised that McDonald’s been a popular presenter.

One of my favourite lines is “On this snow-covered concrete,/I ate from a garbage can/and am better for it” (“St. George of the Road Allowance”), and his description of a river as a “frozen snake of water” also stands out.

The free verse poems are formally centred on the page. At one point the author admits that the poems in the “Eros” section “make [him] cringe in embarrassment” re: their romanticism, and we see this in melodramatic phrases like “my soul cries out,” and “Forbidden love is ours,” but good on McDonald for baring that young, love-tortured soul. I maintain that nobody has an “easy” life, but some suffer more than others. McDonald, fortunately, wrote his way toward a healthy lifestyle. “Words were my life-saving medium,” he says, and he proves through his “renaissance” that he is “so much more than a well-read Indian.”

THIS BOOK IS AVAILABLE AT YOUR LOCAL BOOKSTORE OR FROM THE SASKATCHEWAN PUBLISHERS GROUP WWW.SKBOOKS.COM