Shortlisted for the 2009 Governor General's Literary Award for Poetry

Shortlisted for the Relit Award for Poetry

Philip Kevin Paul's first book, Taking the Names Down from the Hill won the 2004 Dorothy Livesay Award for Poetry. In Little Hunger, his second book for the WSÁ,NEC (Saanich) Nation of Vancouver Island, Paul continues to draw upon the rich oral culture and traditions of his people.

From the eye of a whale rising from the deep, to an albino pigeon being nursed back to health, Paul's work addresses nature, family and traditions that get passed on from generation to generation. A raccoon's eyes become "holy doors of lost keys" and sockeye swim upstream. With elegance and wisdom, Paul speaks of "the stories gone sad, / singing to the hunger that made them, / running past the voices no longer speaking."

Philip Kevin Paul is a member of the WSÁ,NEC Nation from the Saanich Peninsula on Vancouver Island. His work has been published in BC Studies, Literary Review of Canada, Breathing Fire: Canada's New Poets and An Anthology of Canadian Native Literature in English. Paul has worked with the University of Victoria's linguistics department to ensure the preservation of the SENCOTEN language.

Philip Kevin Paul's second book of poetry, Little Hunger, was shortlisted for a 2009 Governor General's Literary Award. His first book of poetry, Taking the Names Down From the Hill, won the 2004 Dorothy Livesay Award for Poetry.

Philip Kevin Paul's profile page

In Little Hunger, his second collection, Philip Kevin Paul continues the project of his first book, Taking the Names Down from the Hill (2003) -- although here he writes in an even more focused manner. This project is to assert and evoke the connectedness of land, culture, and family in Central Saanich, British Columbia, north of Victoria, the traditional territory of the WSÁ, NEC Nation. The result is an intensely local set of poems that assume the place to be central to the author's personal and cultural identity. ... In "Descent into Saanich," he writes of approaching the local airport. In flight he cannot hear the sound of the water "as it slides against / the east end of our smallest islands," a sound he "know[s] by heart" and that "lays claim to [him], a child of Saanich." Paul's poetry is likewise claimed by place. At times his world seems private, scarcely comprehensible to outsiders; the poems, like [Gregory] Scofield's, also depict familiar sorrows.
--Nicholas Bradley, Canadian Literature

Paul...writes in a poetic voice that is highly attuned to sublime elements of nature, hinting at the presence of the supernatural in our surroundings.It is through interactions with nature that Paul explores memories of an absent father, as an exquisite poem Out of Place, in which he recalls his father nursing and albino pigeon and catching an albino salmon:

How close Dad lived
to what he couldn't know:
the albino pigeon, an unwatched bird,
the albino salmon we watched
until it went to deep for us to see
its last white flicker
was what we held in other darknesses ...

Not since Robert Frost's poem Design or Herman Melville's novel Mobyd Dick has the discovery of an eerie whiteness in nature been used so effectively to evoke an uncanny human psychological response.
-- Harold Heft, The Montreal Gazette

Paul's second poetry collection continues almost seamlessly the creative work of his first book, but with a lighter vision and more playful rhythms. It also reaffirms the mature poetic voice that emerged in Paul's first collection, which presented a fully formed world to readers.
-- Jennifer Dales, Arc Poetry Magazine

This is poetry written by an exceptional poet ... Life is a little emptier when we have lost touch with our world, when it doesn't affect us, when it isn't as close to us as it is to Paul. We need his, and other voices like his, to remind us - not of what we've lost, not of what we've given up in the name of progress, but of what we can still have if we remember.
- John Herbert Cunningham, a href=http://ojs.lib.umanitoba.ca/prairie_fire/issue/view/6>Prairie Fire

Philip Kevin Paul conjures contemporary life among the Saanich people with intelligence and perception. Paul's voice is honest about the challenges of living in this community with its addictions, crime, and multi-faceted feelings of loss ... Yet this awareness doesn't distort his affection for the people who form the community, or their legends, language, and traditions, or the land that enfolds them.
--Paul W. Harland, Journal of Canadian Poetry

Little Hunger

Philip Kevin Paul’s poems build on the power of storytelling. The importance of family is obvious in his work, with many tales based on the actions of uncles, grandparents, parents and siblings. He also clearly values the significance of words, especially his own language, WSÁ,NEC (Saanich). “But it’s the Indian names that quiet him. He says the most peculiar thing after I tell him the secret names of salal and the story-trail they lead us to. // You know what, Uncle? Everything I was thinking, except your voice, went away when you were saying that story.” He uses terms and phrases from his language within the poems, but always in a way that is accessible to the reader.

Little Hunger is on the 2009 ReLit longlist. Paul’s first book, Taking the Names Down from the Hill, won the 2004 Dorothy Livesay Award for Poetry.

Caution: The poems include some references to drunkenness, cigarette-smoking and drug use.

Little Hunger

Philip Kevin Paul’s poems build on the power of storytelling. The importance of family is obvious in his work, with many tales based on the actions of uncles, grandparents, parents and siblings. He also clearly values the significance of words, especially his own language, WSÁ,NEC (Saanich). “But it’s the Indian names that quiet him. He says the most peculiar thing after I tell him the secret names of salal and the story-trail they lead us to. // You know what, Uncle? Everything I was thinking, except your voice, went away when you were saying that story.” He uses terms and phrases from his language within the poems, but always in a way that is accessible to the reader.

Little Hunger is on the 2009 ReLit longlist. Paul’s first book, Taking the Names Down from the Hill, won the 2004 Dorothy Livesay Award for Poetry.

Caution: The poems include some references to drunkenness, cigarette-smoking and sex as well as a few subtle allusions to drug use.