Hope Matters by Lee Maracle, Columpa Bobb and Tania Carter

Throughout their youth, Columpa Bobb and Tania Carter wrote poetry with their mother, award-winning author Lee Maracle. The three always dreamed that one day they would write a book together. This book is the result of that dream.

The wide-ranging poems in Hope Matters focus on the journey of Indigenous peoples from colonial beginnings to reconciliation. But they also document a very personal journey—that of a mother and her two daughters.

Written collaboratively, Hope Matters offers a blend of three distinct and exciting voices that come together in a shared song of hope and reconciliation.

Watch the Book Launch and Reading:

Praise for Hope Matters:

“You need to read this book. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry and you’ll swear out loud, but mostly you’ll be proud of these ladies.” —Senator Murray Sinclair

“Daughters and mother poetry dances around each other, weaves rhythm and breathes love. The ancestors sing, babies laugh and hope always wins.” —Katherena Vermette, author of The Break and River Woman

“I was captivated by each and every one of these extraordinary poems. Each of the poets is utterly unique and yet there is a striking commonality: commonality of blood, of perspective, and most of all, how the immense power of female desire is expressed through the power and dynamism of the natural world.” —Judith Thompson, award-winning author of White Biting Dog and The Other Side of Dark

Press Coverage:

20 works of Canadian poetry to check out in spring 2019 —CBC Books

Most Anticipated: Our 2019 Spring Poetry Preview —49th Shelf

11 Canadian poetry collections to check out during National Poetry Month —CBC Books

Globe Books Spring Preview: 37 Books to Dive into as the Weather Warms Up —Becky Toyne, The Globe and Mail

A Reading List for National Indigenous Peoples Day —All Lit Up

14 books to read for Indigenous History Month —CBC Books

Writer Lee Maracle on her Neustadt nomination, and making room for more Indigenous writers —The Globe and Mail

The Best Canadian Poetry of 2019 —CBC Books

35 books to read for National Indigenous History Month —CBC Books

“The writing confronts the reader with the ugly, violent truth and traumatic wounds of colonization, racism, and sexism as inescapably as generations of women have had to face and endure them in their everyday lives. Yet the poetry is a colourful celebration of women’s strength, resilience, and power of love that testifies to their determined efforts to make their families, communities, and nations survive and thrive.” —Jessica Janssen, Canadian Literature

Lee Maracle was the author of a number of critically acclaimed works, including Ravensong; Bobbi Lee, Indian Rebel; Daughters Are Forever; Celia’s Song; I Am Woman; First Wives Club; Talking to the Diaspora, Memory Serves: Oratories; and My Conversations with Canadians, which was a finalist for the 2018 Toronto Book Award and the First Nation Communities READ 2018–19 Award. Hope Matters, a poetry collection co-authored with her daughters Columpa Bobb and Tania Carter, was published in 2019. Maracle was also the co-editor of My Home as I Remember and served as Distinguished Visiting Scholar at the University of Toronto, the University of Waterloo, and the University of Western Washington. Maracle received the J.T. Stewart Award, the Premier’s Award for Excellence in the Arts, the Blue Metropolis Festival First Peoples Prize, the Harbourfront Festival Prize, and the Anne Green Award. Maracle received an Honorary Doctor of Letters from St. Thomas University, was a recipient of the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Medal, and was an Officer of the Order of Canada. In July 2019, she was announced as a finalist of the prestigious Neustadt Prize, popularly known as the American Nobel. A member of the Sto:lo Nation, Maracle passed away on November 11, 2021, in Surrey, British Columbia. She was 71.

Columpa Bobb has worked as a producer, director, playwright and performer for over 30 years. She is the recipient of a Jessie Richardson Theatre Award for Best Actress for the lead role in The Ecstasy of Rita Joe; she was also nominated for Jessie Awards in the categories of Best Supporting Actress and Best Ensemble Cast for her work in Only Drunks and Children Tell the Truth (Firehall Arts Centre). She was nominated for a Dora Mavor Moore Award for Best Actress for Sixty Below (Native Earth Performing Arts); she was also nominated for a Dora Award for Most Outstanding Production (Youth Category) for Jumping Mouse, co-written with Marion deVries. Columpa was also nominated for a Returning the Gift Award for Contributions to North American Native Writing. For more than a decade Columpa ran Canada’s largest and most extensive empowerment through the arts training program for Indigenous youth in Winnipeg, Manitoba, which culminated in the creation of Urban Indigenous Theatre Company, Manitoba’s only professional theatre organization by and for Indigenous people.

Tania Carter is an actor, playwright and poet whose work has appeared in anthologies and scholarly journals. A member of the Sto:lo Nation, she holds a BA in World Literature and a Masters Degree in Theatre, with a specialization in Playwriting. After living in Toronto for twenty years, she now lives in British Columbia.