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Billy-Ray Belcourt — Subarctica
00:17:46
Will you leave this episode feeling uplifted, envious, curious, or something else entirely? Yes. Billy-Ray Belcourt’s poem “Subarctica” transports you to a vividly specific time — “the coldest December / on record, I haven’t left my mother’s / house in over a week” — where the primary view is of poplars in “a tiny schoolyard”. Amid the simplicity and snow, the speaker shifts their perspective, seeing beyond their past and towards the wonder in their present and in what is to come. We invite you to subscribe to Pádraig’s weekly Poetry Unbound Substack, read the Poetry Unbound books and his newest work, Kitchen Hymns, or listen to all our Poetry Unbound episodes.
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My name is Padre Gautuma, and years ago, in my late 20s, I was doing a meditation practice, and the instruction was each morning to spend 10 minutes in silence or something and to ask yourself what emotion was coming to. And, you know, I suppose maybe because of some pain and also a propensity to melodrama, you know, I was quite prepared for pain or difficulty or struggle or all kinds of things to come towards me. And when I finished this meditation practice, it was because one morning, with the absolute clarity of dawn, it became clear to me that on the horizon for me was happiness. And I got up and walked out of the room where I was doing the meditation, thinking, absolutely not. I can't cope with that. I would have rather faced pain than face happiness. And I was shocked to think, how did that happen? My body made the decision. What was my rejection of that? How was I so fundamentally oriented against something that might be good? It took me a long time to reflect on that, and in a certain sense, both physically as well as emotionally and maybe with something like maturity, go back into that room. Subarctica by Billy Ray Belcourt because it's the coldest December on record, I haven't left my mother's house in over a week. I love how simple it is to live right now. It so rarely is, how small and inconsequential my desires are, which rarely are. It would be easy to continue on in this way, hemmed in on all sides by bright light. At last, Lord, the whiteness of the world doesn't frighten me. At last, Lord, I am not my anguish. Outside the window, a row of poplars sway at the edge of a tiny schoolyard, each a statue of awe, each stunned by its own capacity for survival. Because I was so sad all the time. I used to think like the famous poem that I was in the winter of my life. But I was wrong. I saw the whole world and still ached from my childhood, which was half mystery, half omen. It isn't that death is a resolution, but one day I too will be buried beneath snow. Somehow this explains everything. The images in this fantastic poem by Billy Ray Belcourt seem to present an image that sometimes containment, like the opening one, the coldest December on record. I haven't left my mother's house in over a week. That that containment can give you a way of living that is the opposite of restriction. The mother's house of the poem makes me think, you know, not just the biological idea of the house of your mother, but also of motherland, mother tongue, mother house, so there is a sense of particularity and locatedness that's here. There's two parentheticals in the opening part of this poem, and they're included in these lines. I love how simple it is to live right now. It so rarely is, how small and inconsequential my desires are, which rarely are. So it so rarely is. And which rarely are, are like asides, they're in brackets, parentheticals. And they are asides that are showing that the containment is a containment of possibility and of looking at things, of things being removed. And the idea that sometimes the removal of certain features of your life might give you a perspective, a point of view. At last, Lord, the whiteness of the world doesn't frighten me. At last, Lord, I am not my anguish. So these two lines addressed to Lord, at last, Lord, they also seem to be addressed to the speaker. Billy Ray Belcourt is an indigenous writer from the Drift Pile Cree nation in Northern Alberta in Canada. And he is interested, as a queer writer as well, in critiquing the colonial and settler gaze and the heteronormative gaze, in queering what's happening through desire and erotics, as well as bringing the complicated conversation between love and sex and trauma into much of his work. And the yearnings of the body, sometimes arousing in, sometimes alarming, are present in so much of his exploration and his brilliant poetry. And so, at last, Lord, the whiteness of the world doesn't frighten me. At last, Lord, I am not my anguish. These lines lift us up into a way within which this one poem is speaking across many of the interests of his work. This happens to be the final poem of his latest collection, and the speaker is veering into something cumulative, like a song, I think, and telling the truth and using nostalgia of a snow struck period to tell the truth about the ways within which trauma, the ways within which anguish, the ways within which a stuck story can sometimes make you stuck. And here he is, stuck somewhere, somewhere beautiful with this snow and becoming unstuck in the observation of the world around him. The title of this poem is Subactica, and the subarctic zone is a region in the northern hemisphere, immediately south of the Arctic, hence Subarctica, and that covers much of Canada and Alaska and Iceland and the northern parts of Finland, Norway and Sweden and northwestern Russia and Siberia, and parts of Scotland too, in the Cairngorms. And the interesting thing about my own experience of this poem is that despite the imagery of snow and the house and the tiny schoolyard, the window and the extraordinary emotional intelligence of this poem. I keep on finding myself referring to this as being a poem about trees. That's the image that sticks for me in this poem. It might be different for different people. Here's the line. Outside the window, a row of poplars sway at the edge of a tiny schoolyard, each a statue of awe, each stunned by its own capacity for survival. There's a line break at statue. So when you just look at the line, it says, each a statue. And then the line break continues on of awe. And these poplars mark space, and they have a lifespan. Some of the poplars in the subarctic region, according to my very limited research, have a lifespan of 70 to 100 years. But some can have a lifespan of up to 200. And they can trap snow and can increase soil moisture. And this means it can warm the soil and reduce permafrost, which means, therefore, that it's good for growth for all kinds of things. For me, the line I am not my anguish is a deeply powerful one. And we're not given the emotional journey in terms of what it meant to get here. It's inferred, but somehow in the looking at a tree, we see that each tree is stunned by its own capacity for survival. And there we hear the conversation between the line I am not my anguish, and the emotional reckoning with what it means to not be your anguish. Each stunned by its own capacity for survival is what we're told about the trees by that tiny schoolyard. Somehow the tiny schoolyard makes me think too, of what it means to learn, what it means to grow, what it means to relearn, and what it might mean to be re educated in a way that is true to survival, to self, to flourishing. This is a poem that's so intelligent about that which depletes a person in their life and that which undermines a nation's survival through settler colonialism, through ongoing colonization. And here what we have is a poem that is looking locally, that is looking at what is growing, looking at the self to. And looking at what might be the possibility of flourishing. The brilliant writer Hanif Abdur Keeb wrote a blurb about Billy Ray Belcourt. And Hanif said that Billy Ray uses nostalgia as a vehicle for the truth. And I thought that was one of the most insightful things I've ever read about Billy Ray Belcourt's writing, and I've been reading him ever since he started publishing. I love his work and what Hanif Abdurraqib's engagement with the writing makes me think is to ask, what is the truth in this writing, the truth that is conveyed to us with the vehicle of nostalgia. So the imagery goes from the mother's house to looking outside, to the row of poplars, and then to a reflection on sadness. I was so sad all the time and wondering if this was from the famous poem the Winter of his life. And this reorientation of thinking that occurs all looking out the window, it seems to me this is grounded by what's being observed. And the truth is that there's an engagement with death that is not the death of occupation, of being unsettled from your own indigenous land. It is an engagement with a safe imagination of death. It isn't that death is a resolution, but one day I too, will be buried beneath snow. That's what he says. You can hear the clarity and perhaps the hesitation and the commitment to not being misunderstood by saying, it isn't that death is a resolution. But then there's the change. But one day I too, will be buried beneath snow. Death is a comfort not because it's a resolution. This isn't a poem of despair. This is a poem that's spoken in a voice that knows how to contain its own sadness, which might have felt like inexperience of ongoing death. And that it can find ways of looking at safety and deep psychological containment and some distance as well. I used to think, but I was wrong. This poem says the past tense is evoked. I saw the whole world and still ached from my childhood, which was half mystery, half omen. You get the sense of such struggle. And the truth that's being wrestled with, I think, is that the. The truth of sadness and trauma can be looked at sometimes through something that might be an embrace of flourishing. This clearly has come with great struggle, and not just personal struggle, but civic struggle, nation struggle. Finding a way to think. What does it mean to live with my own voice, with my own sexuality, with my own indigenous identity in the midst of an environment that has been so systematized against these things that. And has been so organized against it. I am not my anguish, he declares. What an extraordinary line. And then all of that is brought into one day, I too, will be buried beneath snow. If you look at the poem, the very, very final line is just three words. This explains everything. But that's not the complete sentence. It's the complete final line. But there's a modifier in the line before somehow. Line break. This explains everything. So the generosity of this somehow, it brings us into wonder, I think, and possibility. The strangeness of this moment, the final sentence of the final poem of this brilliant book by Billy Ray Belcourt. The book is called the Idea of an Entire Life Is this somehow this explains everything. It's exquisite, it's filled with wonderful, it's filled with the possibility of flourishing. And it alerts us to what can be seen sometimes in the weather enforced containment of winter. Subarctica by Billy Ray Belcourt because it's the coldest December on record, I haven't left my mother's house in over a week. I love how simple it is to live right now. It so rarely is, how small and inconsequential my desires are, which rarely are. It would be easy to continue on in this way, hemmed in on all sides by bright light. At last, Lord, the whiteness of the world doesn't frighten me. At last, Lord, I am not my anguish Outside the window a row of poplars sway at the edge of a tiny schoolyard, each a statue of awe, each stunned by its own capacity for survival. Because I was so sad all the time. I used to think like the famous poem that I was in the winter of my life, but I was wrong. I saw the whole world and still ached for my childhood, which was half mystery, half omen. It isn't that death is a resolution, but one day I too will be buried beneath snow. Somehow this explains everything. Subarctica by Billy Ray Belcourt appears in the Idea of an Entire Life, published in 2025 by Beacon Press. Thanks to them for permission to use this poem and to Frederick Courtright of the Permissions company.
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Poetry Unbound is Andrea Prevot, Carla Zanoni,
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Gerald Chen, Sparrow Murray, Chris Heagle, Bill
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Siegmund and me, Padre Galtuma. Our music is composed and provided by Gautam Shrikerson and Blue Dot Sessions.
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These episodes were made in New York
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City on unceded Lenape land. Special thanks to Will Salwin, Nave Yan and Adam Morell at Digital Island Studios in Manhattan. Thanks as well to Frederick Courtright of the permissions company. Poetry Unbound is an independent non profit production of the On Being project founded and led by Christa Tippett. This season of Poetry Unbound is made possible by a grant from the Henry Luce Foundation. Our other funding partners include the Liana foundation, the Bedale foundation and Engaging the Census Foundation. Poetry Unbound would be nothing without the listening community. Thanks to all who listen, who read and give through our weekly Poetry Unbound
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substack or directly to On Being for
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links to the substack and to find out more about Poetry Unbound books and events, visit poetryunbound.org.