Biography
“Tyler Pennock is a two-spirit adoptee from a Cree and Metis family around the Lesser Slave Lake region of Alberta, and is a member of Sturgeon Lake Cree Nation. Their first Book, BONES (Brick Books), shortlisted for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award and the Indigenous Voices Award for Poetry, was released in 2020, and their second book, BLOOD was released in September 2022. Tyler was the inaugural Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences Indigenous Artist-in-Residence at Carleton University in 2023, and currently teach at the University of Guelph's OpenEd program, and at the Centre for Indigenous Studies, University of Toronto.
Micro-interview
The man with the beautiful eyes by Charles Bukowski was the first poem I truly loved. I grabbed "The last Night of the Earth Poems" as well as Leonard Cohen's "Stranger Songs" from a second hand book store some time when I was 15. I still have them.
At around grade 6, when I wrote poetry for an English assignment instead of an essay.
Poetry is an act of relationship. And all relationships appear to have one major purpose (among others), and that is to change one's perception of the world.
I believe that in separating ourselves from nature we lose our humanity. I also feel that the natural world provides us a road map on how to live a good life - we only need to see it, and sit long enough to understand it.
Dionne Brand - from thirsty