Randy Lundy searches for truth amid solitude with the poetic Blackbird Song

Randy Lundyis a Saskatchewan-based short story writer, poet andmember of the Barren Lands (Cree) First Nation. Lundy has three poetry collections, 1999'sUnder the Night Sun, 2004'sGift of the Hawkand 2018'sBlackbird Song, which delves into his Indigenous heritage and hiskinship withthe land.

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Saskatchewan living

"I grew up in a small logging community called Hudson Bay in Saskatchewan. People often confuse it with the body of water, but it's just a small logging town sort onthe edge of the boreal forest in northeastern Saskatchewan. It was very isolated. My father his entire life worked in mining and lumber industries. They were working people and a beautiful landscape.

"It was a very isolated, yetbeautiful landscape. It made you appreciate the landscape when you were alone. I still miss it. We often talk about the places we live in the landscapes in which we live and we don't often enough think about the ways in which those landscapes live inside of us as well. The landscape is in many ways still my spiritual home; it's carried around inside me all the time everywhere I go."

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The beautiful struggle

"I've had my own struggles. I've struggled with anxiety, depression, mental health issues and addictions that often go with those things. The only way to address those kinds of things is to deal with the things you need to deal with. And for me,writing is one way of doing that.

"I don't like to think of writing as a kind of metaphor for for healing or therapy. It's not therapy for me. It doesn't serve that function for me in that sort of direct linear kind of way. I turned 50 last year and it's important for me to know who I am and where I came from and acknowledge all of all of it both the pain and the joy."

Randy Lundy's comments have been edited for length and clarity.