I am humbled by the women and girls in my world, and I thank the great spirit for their presence. my métis grandmother, germaine proulx-boyce, taught me to embroider, to work with ribbon. I’m told I have hers and exilda dufort-lafrance, my great-great grandmother. I’ve passed these hands to my daughter, barb, and to my granddaughters, jessinia and mazie. these hands of mine love to write, and I’m told my great grandmother, rosina lafrance-proulx, was a poet, that she talked to the trees, to the plants and animals. and now she talks to me. more than fifteen years ago, rosina’s voice in mine, I woke up to the words “she is reading her blanket with her hands,” the birthing of the poems in this book.

Sharron Proulx-Turner is a member of the Métis Nation of Alberta. Originally from the Ottawa river valley, Sharron is from Algonquin, Ojibwe, Mohawk, Wyandat, Mi'kmaw, French and Irish ancestry. She's a two-spirit nokomis, mom, writer and community worker. Where the Rivers Join (1995), a memoir (Beckylane), was a finalist for the Edna Staebler Award for creative non-fiction, and what the auntys say (2002), was a finalist for the Gerald Lampert Prize for poetry. Sharron's work appears in several anthologies, including Oxford Anthology of Canadian Native Literature in English, Crisp Blue Edges, Tales from Moccasin Avenue, Double Lives: Writing and Motherhood, and in literary journals, including Gatherings, Yellow Medicine Review and West Coast Line. Sharron has two more recent books, a mixed-genre-historical-fiction called, she walks for days/ inside a thousand eyes/ a two-spirit story (2008), and a book of dedication poems called, she is reading her blanket with her hands (2008). She is currently transcribing the recorded lifestory of Lakota Elder Beverly Little Thunder, who, together with her daughter Lushanya Echeverria, leads the only all-women's Sundance on Turtle Island. the trees are still bending south is Sharron's fifth book.

Sharron Proulx-Turner's profile page

she is reading her blanket with her hands: the dedication poems