Winner, J.M. Abraham Atlantic Poetry Award Finalist, Governor General's Literary Awards (Poetry) Shortlisted, E.J. Pratt Family Poetry Prize Longlisted, First Nation Communities READ "Canada rejected our applications for enrolment in the Qalipu First Nation. Initially, I was relieved by the rejection. I'd watched my hometown divide itself - are you Mi´kmaq or settler? Mi´kmaq or not Mi´kmaq enough?" Centred around the Newfoundland Mi'kmaq experience in the wake of the controversial Qalipu First Nation enrolment process, Island wades through the fracture and mistrust that continues to linger in many communities. In this new collection, Douglas Walbourne-Gough expands upon issues of identity and history that he introduced in Crow Gulch, offering a deeply personal and equally beautiful exploration of Mi'kmaw and Newfoundland identity. Walbourne-Gough's narrative poems trace the formation of identity, not through status documentation, but through its deeper roots in childhood memories, family, spirituality, and dreams. Throughout this collection, he approaches life in fragments - snuggling into his nan's sealskin snowsuit, learning Mi'kmaq from an app, or the myriad of complex emotions that come with receiving a status card - and watches them transform into pieces of an everlasting puzzle. Island reckons with an often-ignored, yet persistent, effect of colonialism - fractured identities.

Winner, E.J. Pratt Poetry Award Shortlisted, NL Reads Shortlisted, Derek Walcott Prize for Poetry Shortlisted, Raymond Souster Award Longlisted, First Nation Communities READ AwardFrom the author: I cannot let the story of Crow Gulch - the story of my family and, subsequently, my own story - go untold. This book is my attempt to resurrect dialogue and story, to honour who and where I come from, to remind Corner Brook of the glaring omission in its social history.In his debut poetry collection, Douglas Walbourne-Gough reflects on the legacy of a community that sat on the shore of the Bay of Islands, less than two kilometres west of downtown Corner Brook.Crow Gulch began as a temporary shack town to house migrant workers in the 1920s during the construction of the pulp and paper mill. After the mill was complete, some of the residents, many of Indigenous ancestry, settled there permanently - including the poet's great-grandmother Amelia Campbell and her daughter, Ella - and those the locals called the "jackytars," a derogatory epithet used to describe someone of mixed French and Mi'kmaq descent. Many remained there until the late 1970s, when the settlement was forcibly abandoned and largely forgotten.Walbourne-Gough lyrically sifts through archival memory and family accounts, resurrecting story and conversation, to patch together a history of a people and place. Here he finds his own identity within the legacy of Crow Gulch and reminds those who have forgotten of a glaring omission in history.