She is Spitting a Mouthful of Stars (nikâwi’s song)

She is Spitting a Mouthful of Stars was written by award-winning Métis poet Gregory Scofield, whose aunt was murdered in 1998. The poem will be featured on AKA’s billboard space as the final project in a series of the same title surveying multidisciplinary approaches to protest, resistance and activism. She is spitting a mouthful of stars is a powerful personal response to Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls. The poem honours the women and families who are impacted by this national crisis. Listen to Scofield read the poem for CBC’s the Next Chapter here.

Gregory Scofield is Red River Metis of Cree, Scottish and European descent whose ancestry can be traced to the fur trade and to the Metis community of Kinesota, Manitoba. He has taught First Nations and Metis Literature and Creative Writing at Brandon University, Emily Carr University of Art + Design, and the Alberta College of Art + Design. He currently holds the position of Assistant Professor in English at Laurentian University where he teaches Creative Writing, and previously served as writer-in-residence at the University of Manitoba, University of Winnipeg and Memorial University. Scofield won the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize in 1994 for his debut collection, The Gathering: Stones for the Medicine Wheel. In addition to several volumes of poetry, Scofield is the author of the memoir, Thunder Through My Veins (1999), and his latest collection of poetry is Witness, I Am (2016). In 2016, The Writers’ Trust of Canada awarded Scofield with the Latner Writers’ Trust Poetry Prize.