Hi-Res Front Cover
Author Photo
About the Author
Sample Pages 37-38
Pages 127-128
Pages 144-145

Cover image:
"Fear and Desire"
by Brandon Gabriel
www.gabrielconcepts.com

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5.5 x 8.5 inches | 150 pp | 978-1-926655-79-6 | $20.00

I Want

by Joseph A Dandurand

"I am here / this pen to paper / proves it yet again." So writes Joseph Dandurand, First Nations man in midlife, survivor of violence and abuse, man recovering from addictions, father, lover, man still standing. Dandurand writes out of deep love and commitment to the land, to his ancestors, to his people, to his kids, who "grow up without abuse."

"Hands down, Joseph Dandurand is one of my all time favourite writers. This collection is a bareknuckle brawl of lust and longing. Good Lord—what a voice!!!!"
—Richard van Camp

"How does the Romantic keep on if he's a contemporary First Nations guy? Like the poet Dandurand. There's an honesty that gets bare bones scary in some of these free verse poems. But I rage/and this is the same poem /over and over /repeated /to an empty page. He writes about the woman or women, about being an Indian on a reserve, about heritage and bad histories and children, and about his own troubled mid-life, but thanks to the clarity, often irony of his vision, our awkward humanity speaks through."
—Daniel David Moses

Joseph A. Dandurand is a member of Kwantlen First Nation located on the Fraser River about twenty minutes east of Vancouver. He resides there with his three children Danessa, Marlysse, and Jace.

Joseph is the Heritage/Lands Officer for his people and has been performing his duties for 20 years now. He has been tasked with protecting his people’s heritage from the many destructive elements of development in the Kwantlen territory.

Joseph loves to fish.
He loves to write plays.
He loves to write books of poetry.
He also loves to watch his
daughter Danessa play soccer and hockey.

Joseph is in love with and follows his rich culture.
It is his and his family’s medicine
and it carries them thru the winters
and into the spring time
when the fish start
to come back into the river.

Joseph loves to fish.

Joseph received a Diploma in Performing Arts from Algonquin College and studied Theatre and Direction at the University of Ottawa. His produced plays include Crackers and Soup (1994), No Totem for My Story (1995), Where Two Rivers Meet (1995), and Please Do not Touch the Indians (1998) for the Red Path Theater in Chicago (1999), for the Algonquin Theater in Connecticut (2000 and 2006), for the Debajemejig Theater in Ontario (2001), and at the Autry Theater in Los Angeles California (2004). Joseph was Playwright-in-Residence for the Museum of Civilization in Hull in 1995, for Native Earth in Toronto, 1996, and for the National Arts Centre in Ottawa, 1998. He has also authored a radio script, St Mary's, produced by CBC Radio in 1999.

His poems have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies and are collected in Upside Down Raven (self published), I Touched the Coyote's Tongue (self), and burning for the dead and scratching for the poor (self),  looking into the eyes of my forgotten dreams (Kegedonce), SHAKE (self) and BURIED 2007. His play Please do not touch the Indians was published by Renegade Press in 2004.
	Joseph A. Dandurand: "Me 'n Jace"