Description

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You're the clump of blackened spruce
that lights my gasoline-soaked heart

It's just impossible you won't be back
to quench yourself in my crème-soda
ancestral spirit

Irreverent and transcendent, lyrical and slang, Heating the Outdoors is an endlessly surprising new work from award-winning poet Marie-Andrée Gill.

In these micropoems, writing and love are acts of decolonial resilience. Rooted in Nitassinan, the territory and ancestral home of the Ilnu Nation, they echo the Ilnu oral tradition in Gill's interrogation and reclamation of the language, land, and interpersonal intimacies distorted by imperialism. They navigate her interior landscape—of heartbreak, humor, and, ultimately, unrelenting light—amidst the boreal geography.

Heating the Outdoors describes the yearnings for love, the domestic monotony of post-breakup malaise, and the awkward meeting of exes. As the lines between interior and exterior begin to blur, Gill's poems, here translated by Kristen Renee Miller, become a record of the daily rituals and ancient landscapes that inform her identity not only as a lover, then ex, but also as an Ilnu and Québécoise woman.

About the Author

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MARIE-ANDREE GILL is a member of the Ilnu Nation and grew up on the Mashteuiatsh reserve in the Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean region in Quebec. She is the acclaimed author of three French-language poetry collections, two of which have been translated into English: Spawn and Heating the Outdoors. She hosts the award-winning Radio-Canada podcast "Laissez-nous raconter: L'histoire crochie" (Telling Our Twisted Histories). Gill is a three-time recipient of the Salon du Livre Prize in Poetry, has won two Indigenous Voices Awards, and has been nominated for the Governor General’s Literary Award for Poetry. In 2020, Gill was named Artist of the Year by the Quebec Council of Arts and Letters.

KRISTEN RENEE MILLER is the executive director and editor-in-chief for Sarabande Books. A poet and translator, she is a 2023 NEA Fellow and the translator of two books from the French by poet Marie-Andrée Gill: Spawn (2020) and Heating the Outdoors (2023). Her work can be found widely, including in POETRY, The Kenyon Review, and Best New Poets. She is the recipient of fellowships and awards from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, AIGA, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the Gulf Coast Prize in Translation, and the American Literary Translators Association. She lives in Louisville, Kentucky.

Praise For…

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“...a hand-stitched resistance through the very gesture of writing.” —Véronique Côté, Le Devoir
 

“...a luminous, resilient read that finds resonance in our little hidden wounds.” —Rose Carine Henriquez, Le Devoir

 

“An exceptional third book by the Saguenay poet, who kneels in the beautiful snowbanks of a love that melts all too quickly.” —Dominic Tardif, Le Devoir

 

“I’m literally captivated by the accuracy, the beauty. They taste of honey, these poems.” —Karine Villeneuve, Page par Page

 

“Poet of the intimate territories and champion of the language of everyday life.” —Étienne Provencher-Rousseau, Point de suspension

 

“...the commonplace and the lyric coexist in a manner not only coherent but significant in a collection that confirms [Gill’s] place among the important figures of Quebec poetry.” —Camille Toffoli, Nouveau Projet