Sleeping in Tall Grass
April 05th, 2016
Richard Therrien’s chapbook Water Language Faith was published by Alfred Gustav Press (2012) after he co-authored, with Dean Neu, Accounting for Genocide, Canada’s Bureaucratic Assault on Aboriginal People (Fernwood Publishing/Zed Books, 2003), widely circulated as a university Native Studies text. His first collection of poetry, Sleeping in Tall Grass (University of Alberta Press 2016) reflects a redemptive family story involving pain and abuse.
Richard Therrien does not tweet. He considers his itinerant years—making candy, washing dishes, building stone walls and gardens, clearing bush, delivering useless goods, and selling advertising—to be vital to his journeyman years as a writer. He has hitch-hiked across North America and Europe, hopped freight across the prairies and Rockies, and worked on a freighter to Japan. He studied at The Cuernavaca Center for Intercultural Dialogue on Development in Cuernavaca, Mexico (founded by Ivan Illich) and written essays in various Sufi journals. Along the way he has also worked in television, conflict resolution, for non-profits, for peace and development and taught creative writing. Also a ghost-writer, he has edited Royal Commission Reports, government studies, memoirs and novels. He has published poetry and prose in various periodicals, including Grain, The New Quarterly, Prairie Fire, Filling Station, Absinthe, and CV2.
Richard Therrien was born in St. Boniface Manitoba, grew up in Edmonton, lived in Calgary, Jasper, Vancouver, Montreal, Guelph, Inuvik, and Qualicum Beach. He then moved to North Vancouver. [Photo by Isaac Therrien]
Sleeping in Tall Grass (Universty of Alberta Press 2016) 978-1-77212-122-3 104 pages | $19.95 paperback
Leave a Reply