A Bow Forged From Ash
“A Bow Forged From Ash,” a poetry collection written by Melissa Powless Day delivers lived experience, ancestral memory, familial storytelling and a deepening relationship with the land. Language is in a state of reclamation, authentic and personal, Powless Day carves out space for authentic reckoning and cementing voice. “A Bow Forged From Ash” cultivates individuality during a time of umbrella terms in the healing of a country facing its colonial past and a time when marginalized experiences rise to the surface.
Melissa Powless Day is Anishinaabe and Kanien’kehá:ka from Bkejwanong Territory (Walpole Island First Nation) and has family ties to Six Nations of the Grand River Territory. She is a scholar and educator currently pursuing a PhD in Indigenous Education at Western University. Powless Day serves as chair of Western’s Indigenous Writers’ Circle and works as a Visiting Cultural Teacher with the London District Catholic School Board. Her poetry has appeared in “The Temz Review,” “TNQ,” “The Windsor Review,” “Luna Station Quarterly,” and “Yellow Medicine Review.” Her first chapbook, “Secondhand Moccasins,” was published in 2023 by Anstruther Press and shortlisted for the bpNichol Chapbook Award. Her first full-length collection, “A Bow Forged from Ash,” was published by Palimpsest Press in late fall 2025. She lives in Deshkan Ziibi (London, Ontario) with her research assistants, Pixie the chihuahua and Shiloh, the orange tabby.
Taken from their website, Palimpsest Press publishes poetry, literary fiction, and non-fiction titles that deal with poetics, cultural criticism, and literary biography. They look for poetry that displays technical mastery, precise language, and an authentic voice, and fiction that is rich in imagery, well crafted, and focused on character development. Their non-fiction titles are essays or memoirs written by poets, and books that examine Canadian poetry and the Canadian cultural landscape. Palimpsest Press’ mission is to publish high quality work in beautifully designed and collectible volumes. Their belief is that a book should be an object of beauty and inspiration. Their objectives are to seek out the best new and established voices in Canadian literature and they have committed at least 30% of their titles to authors living with disability. They are committed to maintaining high editorial and production standards, ensuring their trade books are well distributed, kept in print, and promoted through readings, events and advertising.
Their imprint, Anstruther Books, is named after a lake in the North Kawarthas and curated by Jim Johnstone. Anstruther Books publishes poetry from a diverse cross-section of the Canadian literary community. This imprint specializes in poetry that is tapped into the speed and spirit of the 21st century, and includes political, socially-minded, and transgressive poetry, as well as conceptual books that maintain a lyric bent.
Divided into three sections, “Nock,” “Pull,” and “Loose,” the very layout of the text transforms it into a weapon. In archery, ‘nock’ is the small notch or fitted piece at the rear of an arrow that clips onto the bowstring. The ‘nock’ holds the arrow in place before the shot. To ‘nock an arrow’ means to set it onto the string. And, that is precisely what Powless Day accomplishes in the first section.
In “Nock,” Powless Day presents an achingly powerful image, one moccasin, and she pulls this image through several threads of poems. The poet finds one moccasin in the attic, she also finds ‘this poem,’ with it. “The foot is gone-,” “taken from the dancer or/ a child crying shed it in/ the Sixties Scoop or/ a mother kept it in/ the Voortman’s cookie tin….” Powless Day cuts in deeper. “This moccasin was lost” and “it is deer skin/ old as the last/ Hunt.” The reader follows the line of thought: “WHAT HAPPENED/ ?(to the other mocc).” There, Powless Day leaves us at the core of throbbing pain.
Whose moccasin is it? What happened to them? The reality of this pain cannot be fully felt by all readers, they are not on the inside of this pain. A symbol of what was taken from generations of indigenous peoples, the loss of innocence of children. Lost children. The arrow has been placed, and we look straight down the shaft. Powless Day will tell us how the moccasin was found. Her grandmother found it and we do not know the time between her keeping it safe and storing it in her attic. But, “she found the moccasin/ on a forage in the/ eastern corner of what/ she knew as/ the rez.” We can picture a child on the run. The next question hurts more. What happened to the other shoe?
With the finality of the volume, Powless Day transforms the very form of her writing into a bow forged from ash. Ash, what comes after destruction and yet, exists simultaneously as endurance. Ash in a tree as well, the wood traditionally used for bows, spear shafts and handles. Ash wood is flexible and shock resistant, an ideal weapon can be crafted from it that holds tension without breaking. This bow, this collection of poetry, is controlled power.
A weapon birthed from ruin, not glory, a weapon of necessity. This weapon remembers what was destroyed to make it. I could imagine and wished there were answers given, especially with a bow raised and aimed expertly. Whose shoe was it? What happened to them? This bow is not a weapon of conquest though, it is a tool of responsibility. The answers need not be given. Sadly, the answers cannot be given. We will never know what happened to the other shoe.
Thank you to Melissa Powless Day, Palimpsest Press and River Street Writing for a complimentary copy in request for an honest review.
