Canadian Poets Series #7 : Armand Garnet Ruffo

Armand Garnet Ruffo is an Anishinaabe writer and a band member of the Chapleau Cree Fox Lake First Nation in remote northern Ontario. Considered a major contributor to both contemporary Indigenous literature and Indigenous literary scholarship in Canada, he is a recipient of an Honourary Life Membership Award from the League of Canadian Poets and the Latner Writers’ Trust Poetry Prize in recognition of his work. His publications include Norval Morrisseau: Man Changing Into Thunderbird (2014) and Treaty# (2019), both finalists for Governor General’s Literary Awards. In 2020, he co-edited An Anthology of Indigenous Literatures in English: Voices from Canada for OUP.  His latest book, winner of the VMI Betsy Warland “Between Genres” Award, is a multi-genre adaptation of Sounding Thunder: The Song of Francis Pegahmagabow (2024), a musical drama based on the life of the renowned WWI Ojibwe sniper. Numerous interviews with him exist online, including through Poetry in Voice, by David Griffin Brown for The Malahat Review, by Jonathan Ball, by rob mclennan for Jacket2, by Amanda Proctor for The Malahat Review, by Shelagh Rogers for The Next Chapter, CBC Radio, and by rob mclennan again for VERSeFest at periodicities: a journal of poetry and poetics. He is currently the Queen’s National Scholar in Indigenous Literature at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario.