North End Love Songs

• The great Canadian reading list: 150 books to read for Canada 150

In North End Love Songs, Katherena Vermette's debut collection of poems, the young Mtis/Mennonite poet pays tribute to Winnipeg's toughest and most notorious neighbourhood: the North End. She writes of its beauty and of the loss she experienced her brother went missing there. These are gritty poems of spare but piercing intensity.

• Katherena Vermette on why quiet stories speak the loudest

North End Love Songs won the Governor General's Literary Award for poetry in 2013.

• How North End Love Songs by Katherena Vermette healed Bif Naked's heart

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From the book

Author interviews

Heart: by Katherena Vermette

9 years ago

Duration 2:44

Katherena Vermette knows her beloved neighbourhood in Winnipeg has a reputation for violence and racism, and the Governor General Award-winning Mtis poet is using the power of words to change that.

More about this book

Q7:06Katherena Vermette's musical tribute to Winnipeg's North End

The Governor General's Award for fiction finalist pays tribute to her hometown in Winnipeg, Manitoba.