Famed writers read and talk in Havre

Two renowned Montana writers, state Poet Laureate Chris La Tray and Montana Book Award Winner Debra Magpie Earling, were at a packed Beaver Creek Perk Thursday evening for a reading and discussion about their lives, influences and the importance of storytelling in an event put on by the Hi-Line Arts Council.

The event, Poetic Musings, was moderated by council member Charles Finn, himself a Montana Book Award winner, who introduced the speakers and moderated the event which began with each talking about their work before doing a brief reading.

La Tray, a member of the Little Shell Tribe, said he does a lot of non-poetry writing, but as the state's poet laureate he feels obligated to read some, though sometimes he has trouble deciding which poems to read.

He said he was at an event recently when someone asked him to recite some poetry off the cuff, to which he replied with the haiku "Feet skilled at finding cat puke in the dark," a poem that seems silly and crass on the surface until he tells them about its origin.

"After the laughter, I tell them that this is a story I tell to myself about my cat who is no longer with me," he said.

La Tray said he remembers the outrage he felt at the time, with his feline companion operating what seemed to be an effective guerilla war against his feet in the mornings, but now after bidding farewell to someone who was in his life for 23 years, it's a fondly remembered story, one that can connect with other people despite how it sounds at first.

"In that context, it becomes something totally different. And that, to me, is what is truly beautiful about poetry," he said.

La Tray said he can read the works of Asian poets who wrote 300 years ago, describing the cold as they view their community from high up a mountain, and feel connection, having done something similar himself.

Among the poems he read was one recounting a visit to the house of Canadian politician and Metis resistance leader Louis Riel, and the tipsy local the narrator encountered during his pilgrimage to pay his respects to the revolutionary.

The second was about the Hi-Line, written by La Tray about a night drive home from the Turtle Mountain Indian Reservation, an expression of the way the moonless starlight sky made him feel and the profound love he felt for this place during his journey.

The third was an anger-filled reflection on the colonialism that pushed his people and people of other Native cultures from their land, lands that would be bought and sold by slave owners now venerated in American mythology, and the rage he feels when he sees the glorification of the that violent colonialist past against "terrible savages," and the modern framing of conflicts therein as wars, rather than what they were, a peoples' desperate struggle for survival and the preservation of their way of life.

"I'm a terrible f***ing savage, and I'm proud of that," he said.

The second speaker, Debra Magpie Earling, a Bitteroot Salish author, talked about her experiences as a writer, especially the long project of writing the now critically acclaimed "Perma Red," the story of a wild woman who fought against all efforts to confine her, whether that meant breaking out of the influence of her abusive boarding school, or a toxic marriage, or the labels others attached to her.

The story is based on the life of Earling's aunt Louise, who died at the age of 23 in the Flathead, a life she found too compelling to ignore.

"Her story was so powerful to me I had to write it," she said.

Earling talked about losing the only copy of the first manuscript of the book in a fire and having to start over from the beginning.

She talked about the difficulties of finding an editor who was willing to help her with the story, the many rejections she faced along the way, many of them going out of their way to decry her work's shortcomings.

And when her work finally started to gain interest, watching that interest completely fall off when they read the dark ending of the story, which, true to the story of her aunt Louise, originally ended with her death.

She recalls asking her editor if changing the ending would make a difference, to which they said yes, despite their reluctance to see it changed.

Earling said the prospect of changing the ending was conflicting, but she wrote a version with a still dark ending, but one in which Louise lives, and sent it to her mother so see what she thought of it.

"She called me crying and said, 'you've given me back my sister if she would have lived. I can see her again,'" she said.

"Perma Red," which was published in 2002, was recently listed in The Atlantic's list of The Great American Novel's one of the highest commendations in literature, and one many consider to be a long time coming for a piece of writing that too many overlooked for far too long.

Earling said she remembers being at university and hearing the phrase Great American Novel and being able to share the distinction of having written one with her old professor, the renowned author James Welch is an accomplishment she can't help but be proud of.

She said there are people in the crowd who are aspiring writers themselves and she beseeched them to keep at it and never give up.

She said truly amazing stories don't need to be hunted for, they are all around them and when the inspiration to write one comes, don't let it go, don't wait for conditions to be perfect, "just let it come to you and write."

Finn said he wanted to thank Beaver Creek Perk owner Brian James for hosting this event and for generally being a stand-up member of the community.