Interview: Tenille Campbell
By Jordan Abel
Art by Michelle Campos Castillo
Jordan Abel: My first question is about #IndianLovePoems. One of the things that I find so interesting about that book and about that text is that every single poem is titled with a number, and the book is under one hundred pages long but there are titles of poems that range into the thousands. To me, this implies the existence of thousands of poems that belong to this project, and in the print copy, we just get 80 or so poems. Likewise, you also have this larger digital project that’s visible mostly through Instagram where you have all these other poems coming in. Some of which appear in #IndianLovePoems and some of which don’t. So my question is how do you think about the boundaries of this text? As both print and digital, where does this project begin and end for you? Is it an ongoing project? Do you see the print component as more important than the digital? Or the other way around? And has this changed in the years since you published the print version of the project?
Tenille Campbell: I’ve never really considered #IndianLovePoems to have a boundary, because it feeds into this idea, as you noticed, that the poems number into the thousands, and I’ve always said that’s because Indigenous peoples carry innumerable love poems within them. We’re more than the one or two sad love stories that we’re given in movies or TV. We have the ability to create complex, multifaceted, in-depth love stories of heartbreak, of joy, of celebration, of sadness, of grief, of light, and #IndianLovePoems was just part of it. I think by leaving the gaps in the numbers, it was an invitation to fill this space with your own story. There is space for you here, too. If there’s space for me, there’s space for you.
The online part of this project was based on access and accessibility. Not everyone reads poetry. Or so I’m told—especially by my own people. But everyone likes a blurb. Everyone likes something that’s to the point. Like, ouch! Because we do read poetry. We just have never thought about it in such a way. These are little sound bytes or stanzas out of a larger poem that still point to a specific idea.
It’s really worked well for me in helping to build this online community. Instagram gives me the stats. It’s 95 percent women. Which is great! It’s great that women like these discussions of not just sex and sensuality, but also vulnerability and hope and laughter. I feel like they really feed into each other. Instagram is a place to go to see the newest work, the rawest work. I always call it my first draft, because whatever will show up there if it’s really good will show up in the next draft of a book. Sometimes edited. Sometimes not.
But I don’t think of it as having boundaries. Obviously, you can’t add pages to a book that’s already been printed, but it is a continual project. A continual storytelling project. A continual poetry project. I like the way it suits my life as a storyteller, and I like the way it allows me to connect—but in very specific ways where I can set up those boundaries of how I interact with people.
#2001
broken Cree words
whisper down my body
between my legs
into my universe
where you tell me stories
with tongue and lips
and I take
tradition into me
until I burst
I feel invincible
almighty and woman
with legs splayed
letting him see
what pleasure looks like
without shame
this is what my ancestors
must have felt like
come to me again
my gifted Cree man
taste your language
on my skin
in my pleasure
make me moan
in those forgotten
syllables
make me
speak pleasure
once again
JA: I love the idea of the project itself not having boundaries, not having limitations, and that the print book is a record of a particular moment of that project, but that #IndianLovePoems itself is actually much bigger than that and is much more expansive. And that overarching project itself allows more people to access it. Those questions about accessibility are so important. Who gets to read the things that we write? Who’s allowed to access them? I think you’re right to say that poetry is not a form that everyone has access to. Whereas work that’s freely available on social media is very accessible.
My next question is related to access too. How do you see your writing in relation to writers like Rupi Kaur, Amanda Lovelace, or Atticus? Or, generally, the Instapoets of the world. And how do you see your writing in relation to writers like Gregory Scofield, Louise Halfe, and Maria Campbell? Is it useful to think about those groupings and where your work might be in conversation with both? In different ways perhaps?
TC: I don’t think of my work as being in relation with other Instapoets mainly because they’re not Indigenous. And that’s not to say they’re not amazing. Everyone you list is. I’m not writing love poems for the world. I’m writing love poems for our Indigenous youth, aunties, elders, uncles, and—if anyone else sees themselves in it, that’s amazing—but I’m not catering to that.
However, I do think of my work as being in a relationship with folks like Gregory and Maria and Katherena [Vermette] and all these big names. It’s not even the work itself. It’s that we know all these people. Indian authorship is so small that—even though I read Gregory’s work in a class fifteen years ago—now I tease him as “Uncle Gregory.”
That’s the kind of relationship—an in-person, tactile, textual relationship—that I’m interested in. Writing isn’t the goal. Writing is the processing. But the thing I’m after is the experience and the relationship.
JA: That makes so much sense to me that relationships and community are at the forefront of whatever this is.
TC: Community first. Experience it first. And then through art we process.
JA: That’s going to make such a great quote.
#45
dene love
is low and rough
and made of moonlight
sliding across boreal floors
constant shivers
of water running over
smooth rock
dene love
is untamed yet gentle
a piece of forever
a legend of its own
remember that time…
dene love
is pressed up against stall doors
in the shadows
laughing low into his neck
so you don’t get caught
dene love
is hard and furious
rapids
a river that never freezes
the steam rising from a den
hidden in earth
dene love
is a hickey
beneath your breast
marked but hidden
his but not
dene love
is a sudden bloom
of wild rose hips
small ripe strawberries
a feast for those
who know
where to look
JA: So I put your work on the syllabus of every Indigenous Literatures class that I get to teach, and the reason why is that I love how joyful and humorous your writing is. And when I teach Indigenous poetry and poetics or when I teach Indigenous Literatures more broadly I find myself drawn to your vision of Indigenous joy. So my question is what is the importance of joy in your work? How do you translate joy to the page? And would you describe the kind of joy that you bring to your writing as an Indigenous joy?
TC: Joy is foundational to me. I firmly believe that how we walk through life is a choice, and I made the choice a long time ago to see the light. Acknowledging that as an Indigenous woman darkness exists, and it can devour us. And I can be mad about so many things even right now. But is that going to feed my soul? Is that going to feed my spirit? Is that going to make me a healthier person to raise a daughter? Is that going to benefit my community? I can’t carry anger.
I mean, don’t get me wrong, I can be a petty bitch. But! That deep abiding anger of hate—it tastes awful to me. And whenever I feel that way I have to physically work to expel that anger be it through writing, painting, smudging, exercising. I have to physically expel this anger from my body. I have to fill my life with joy. And it’s not even the big joy, right? It’s not even an orgasm a day. It’s like coffee in your favourite mug. It’s buying a new set of beads. Not that I need any more beads! And it’s those little things that give me as much of a euphoric high as the big things.
Joy is foundational to me. I choose joy. I chase joy. I’ve created a life of joy by following things that make me happy. And that’s just my formula for a good life. Be happy. Which is simple but so hard for so many people.
Indian joy is specific and nuanced. Some have said that maybe Indian humour is survivalist humour. But I think attributing our humour to colonialism doesn’t make sense. We were funny pre-contact I’m pretty sure!
To be honest, I’m not sure what makes our humour unique. You know how a joke isn’t funny if you have to explain it? Well, I don't know how to explain Indian humour other than you have to feel it with your chest.
JA: As an Indigenous author, how do you define Indigenous writing? And is this a category that you find useful/important as a writer? And/or as an academic?
TC: Anything written by an Indigenous person. I don’t really care about theme or topic or genre or writing style. But it’s also not up to me to define who is an Indigenous person. I think that by accepting this broad definition, it opens up the possibilities of what Indigenous Literatures can be.
Indigenous Literatures happen when you write from the inside of this weirdly defined, always shifting, never solid circle. And then it doesn’t matter what you write. I’m just interested in the writing. Because I don’t think Indigenous writing has to be filled with these overdetermined markers of Indigeneity. I don’t think that Indigenous people have to write only about Indigenous people.
Nedi Nezu
I wanna be tangled in moonlight
wrapped up in northern lights
guided home by the North Star
trailing down Churchill River
hand in hand with you
I wanna be tracing your stories
constellations of ink and scars
hearing your memories
echo in the dark
between dusk and dawn
I wanna be your roots ensnared
in sandy soil lush with moss
beside hidden waterfalls
soft rock smoothed over
by running water
I wanna be part of your joy
the smile on your face
when you hear my name
the blush in your cheeks
when you think of last night
I wanna be your home
your land
your memories
JA: What Indigenous book are you the most excited about right now? And what non-Indigenous books are you the most excited about?
TC: There’s a book called Hunter with Harpoon by Inuit author Markoosie Patsauq, and it’s not a book about hope and light. But it is a book about pragmatic choices based on belief structures that are different from ours. I don’t want to give away any more than that because it’s quite a great book and I do think people should read it for themselves to be uncomfortable in their understanding of morality versus belief. What is right? And when do we make that choice? That book fucked me up.
JA: Wow, that is an amazing thing to say about a book.
TC: Yeah, I like that one. I’ve also been really liking Cherie Dimaline’s work. Especially her early work Red Rooms. Her latest work is lovely of course. In her early work she was one of the few authors that didn’t put Indigenous markers on everything. She’d write work where you’d have to look for the cultural nuance to understand that a character was an Indigenous character for example.
Honestly, my non-Indigenous books are just straight smut. Because sometimes you just need a break. Sometimes you just want to be a naughty girl. Every month or two I’ll just have a weekend of smut. I can get through like four or five in a weekend. Just trash. Just variations of being spanked all weekend.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
❀
Tenille K. Campbell is a Dene/Métis author and photographer from English River First Nation, SK. She completed her MFA in Creative Writing from UBC and is enrolled in her PhD at the University of Saskatchewan. Her inaugural poetry book, #IndianLovePoems (Signature Editions, 2017) is an award-winning collection of poetry that focuses on Indigenous Erotica, using humour and storytelling to reclaim and explore ideas of Indigenous sexuality. She is also the artist behind sweetmoon photography and the co-creator of tea&bannock. She currently resides in Saskatoon.
Jordan Abel is a queer Nisga’a writer from Vancouver. He is the author of The Place of Scraps (winner of the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize), Un/inhabited, and Injun (winner of the Griffin Poetry Prize). NISHGA won both the Hubert Evans Non-Fiction Prize and the VMI Betsy Warland Between Genres award, and was a finalist for the Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction, the Wilfrid Eggleston Award for Nonfiction, and the Roderick Haig-Brown Regional Prize. Abel’s latest work, a novel titled Empty Spaces, is now available from McClelland & Stewart and Yale University Press.