Emily Riddle

In this month’s podcast Rayanne Haines speaks with Emily Riddle about her debut poetry collection, The Big Melt. The collection is rooted in nehiyaw thought and urban millennial life events. It examines what it means to repair kinship, contend with fraught history, go home and contemplate prairie ndn utopia in the era of late capitalism and climate change. Part memoir, part research project, this collection draws on Riddle’s experience working in Indigenous governance and her affection for confessional poetry in crafting feminist works that are firmly rooted in place. In their conversation Emily and Rayanne speak about kinship, land, joy, queer love, and intergenerational trauma in magpies.