Old Gods - Paperback

Old Gods by Conor Kerr - Contemporary Indigenous Poetry

Métis Ukrainian writer Conor Kerr's sharp and incisive poems move restlessly across landscapes and time.

Conor Kerr's poetry is in constant motion. 4Runners streak through the night, racing with coyotes and roving across the land. Buses travel from town to town, from one memory to another, from past to present. Friends and lovers search for each other on Instagram and find nothing. And always the natural world travels alongside: the watching magpies, woodpeckers and cedar waxwings, the coyotes and porcupines. Family is the crisp wings of mallard ducks flying at dawn, just as it is a game of crib, a Mario Kart race, a dance party.

Old Gods defies colonialism on the Prairies. Kerr situates his reader in the Métis mindset: the old gods of the land are alive within the rivers, the birds, the hills and the prairies that surround us, and they'll always be here.

About This Poetry Collection

This debut collection from Nightwood Editions captures the restless energy of Prairie life through a distinctly Métis lens. The poems traverse physical and temporal landscapes, connecting urban experiences with ancestral lands. Kerr's work bridges contemporary culture—social media, video games, road trips—with the enduring presence of natural spirits and traditional ways of knowing.

The collection addresses themes of Indigenous identity, decolonization, family bonds, and the living relationship between people and land. Through precise imagery and dynamic movement, Kerr creates a poetic space where old gods persist within modern Prairie existence.

What Readers Will Find

Poems that move between memory and present moment, urban and rural spaces, human and animal perspectives. The natural world—birds, coyotes, rivers, hills—appears not as backdrop but as active presence and witness. Family relationships emerge through everyday moments: card games, shared meals, dawn hunting trips. The collection confronts colonial history while asserting the continued vitality of Indigenous worldviews and spiritual connections to place.