Matthew James
Weigel
Matthew James Weigel is a Dene and Métis poet and artist. He is the designer for Moon Jelly House press and his words and art have been published in Arc, The Polyglot, and The Mamawi Project. Weigel is a National Magazine Award finalist, a Cécile E. Mactaggart Travel Award winner, and the 2020 Vallum Chapbook Award winner. His chapbook, It Was Treaty / It Was Me, is available now. Whitemud Walking is his debut collection. Weigel lives in Edmonton.
Award History
Jury Citation
“Matthew James Weigel’s Whitemud Walking is a feat of both imagination and design. At the levels of content, form, and book design, Weigel renders the high-pressure act of gleaning from colonial archives some sense of Indigenous life and political thought. He skillfully blends the traditions of conceptual poetry and Indigenous autobiography to make something beautiful and endlessly innovative that brings into focus the act of treaty-making as one of deep care from an Indigenous point of view. The book adds up to an intimate and researched call to refuse the colonial imperative to separate ourselves from the landscape, from the land. Whitemud Walking is a book about the past that is so alive it thrums.”
— 2022 Dayne Ogilvie Prize Jury (Billy-Ray Belcourt, Samra Habib, and Zoey Leigh Peterson)
