She predates our glass and pavement | Emily Laurent Henderson
December 5, 2024
illustration by Emily Laurent Henderson, 2024
Where is the land?
Are you on it?
In it?
Do you have to go to it?
Do you draw lines between the land and the city?
How does the land smell?
How does it taste?
Am I on the land only when I can see the stars,
or hear the silence settle over my ears?
Can I be on the land living cloaked in cement,
waiting at crosswalks,
navigating the train?
Where is the land?
The land does not stop being the land
if we decide to pave it.
My second story apartment will crumble,
the land beneath it will not.
For now, I live in the city,
but for always, I am on the land.
– She predates our glass and pavement
Curling up to fall asleep on the tongue of a predator,
a body made projection screen
made sacrificial altar
for someone else’s fantasies and fears,
applauded for state sanctioned silence –
we are asked to keep dreaming sweet dreams
of beautiful things in boxes,
hands tied, mouth poured full
of wine and sugar and flour
turned sandcastles,
made malleable,
made lilting and docile,
asking for the upcycled, the made-to-order,
the subscription service
to the stories of my ancestors.
– Living things: you have placed me in a glass case
In the midst of the business
of setting small fires,
I began to take note of those
who were building small hearths.
– Can resistance be soft sometimes too?
These poems appear in Emily Laurent Henderson’s debut poetry collection Hold Steady My Vision (Publication Studio, 2024), curated by Taqralik Partridge as part of the Indigenous Otherwise program at Musagetes, facilitated by Elwood Jimmy.
Currently based in Tkaronto/Toronto, Ontario, Emily Laurent Henderson is a Kalaaleq (Greenlandic Inuk) and Settler curator and poet. A 2020 University of British Columbia graduate in Anthropology, Emily’s work and writing centres Inuit and Indigenous self-determination in the arts. She has appeared in titles such as Inuit Art Quarterly, Azure, Studio Magazine, and more.
Growing up surrounded by the Inuit art world, Emily is a former staff writer for the Inuit Art Quarterly, and the co-editor behind the first issue of the Quarterly that featured all-Inuit contributors (IAQ 32.5). Currently, she works as the Associate Curator of Indigenous Art at the McMichael Canadian Art Collection.
