I went to the Garden City Collegiate choir concert on Monday night. It was a terrific concert with many great performances. My favorite piece was Lineage by composer Andrea Ramsey. It was sung by the women’s choir. The lyrics were taken from a poem written by Margaret Walker
My grandmother Margaretha Peters in a grain field on the farm where she worked for much of her life
My grandmothers were strong.
They followed plows and bent to toil.
They moved through fields sowing seed.
They touched earth and grain grew.
They were full of sturdiness and singing.
My grandmothers were strong.
My grandmother Annie Schmidt doing laundry on her back porch
My grandmothers are full of memories
Smelling of soap and onions and wet clay
With veins rolling roughly over quick hands
They have many clean words to say.
My grandmothers were strong.
Why am I not as they?
I often think of the hard lives my grandmothers had and how despite this they remained kind, caring, open hearted women with a sense of humour. They inspire me. I come from a lineage of strong women.
Other posts………
That’s a line from poem by Emily Pauline Johnson called The Song my Paddle Sings. At their most recent concert featuring Canadian composers the Winnipeg Singers performed a musical version of the poem. Listening to them brought back lots of memories for me. 
Emily Pauline Johnson was a Mohawk poet who became famous as a touring artist. She went across North America reciting her poetry. Her father was a First Nations chief and her mother an Englishwoman so Emily grew up influenced by two different cultures. Her aboriginal name was Tekahionwake. 
Katherena Vermette came away from the Manitoba Book Awards with three prizes for her novel 
But while Paterson is doing all these seemingly routine things he is also intimately observing the world around him, carefully considering every little thing he sees and listening thoughtfully to what people say. And then he writes poetry about his observations and reflections in a small brown notebook he keeps with him almost all the time. He rarely shows his wife these poems, never shows them or reads them to anyone else, and despite his wife’s constant urging never makes copies of them. 
