Joshua Whitehead on poetry's radical, survivalist nature

April is National Poetry Month. To celebrate, CBC Books asked poets the question: "What is the power of poetry?"

Joshua Whiteheadis an Oji-Nehiyaw, two-spirit poet, storyteller and academic from Peguis First Nation on Treaty 1 territory in Manitoba.

• Why Joshua Whitehead wants to recentre Indigenous characters with his cyberpunk-infused poetry

His book,full-metalindigiqueer, is a collection of experimentalpoems that aim to provoke discussion and debate.

"Indigeneity, as apan-peoplehoods, as a network oflandbases, and as a signifying word, is too used to being a trace. For me, poetry is a revenant, one that's re-augmented, one that covers the body in jingle cones (which folks too often read as arrowheads, and sometimes rightfully so) it's resistance but it's also survival.

"To be a poet and to sling stories into the world is to reformat the body in such a way that it cannot ever become obliterated. But it's also a homecoming, something that leads me back into my communities with that sweet, sweet smell ofmaskihky(which is alwaysnohkm'shair). Poetry lets me be as radical, as unabashed, as loud, as femme, as queerand Indigenous in my full-metal glory that's what my poetry's taught me."