The weight of history lies on the spine of memory. That heft and delicate balance are palpable in these rich poems that echo with grief, longing, and observed beauty. From the silence and complexity of the northern wilderness to the vast prairie landscapes stretching across the province, Through Disassembled Houses of Perfect Stones explores self, ancestry, and community through poems which dwell on the page with a satisfying density of imagery. Combining careful observation with sensitive reflection, this work examines the poet's memory and experience as a father, son, husband, and descendent of European settlers married into an Indigenous family living in Northern Manitoba.

David Yerex Williamson is an instructor and poet living in northern Manitoba on the banks the Nelson River on Treaty 5 Territory of the Kinasao Sipi Cree Nation (Norway House). His recent works have appeared in The Dalhousie Review, Prairie Fire, The New Quarterly, Prairie Journal of Literature, Heartwood, a League of Canadian Poets anthology in honour of our relationship with trees, and Sweet Water, by Caitlyn Press, an anthology about water sheds. He is also the co-founder of the Language Arts Festival for University College of the North, an annual writing and performing arts festival that introduces high school students from across the north to professional story-makers. When not teaching, writing or drawing, David shovels snow, cuts wood and chases his dogs along the historic river.

David Williamson's profile page

“… these poems are beautifully evocative of place and evince a close attention to the particularities of land and its inhabitants through shifting seasons… in the entanglement of history and place that occurs throughout.” – Emily McGiffin, poet, lecturer (UBC), winner of the 2008 Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers, Writers Trust of Canada, co-chair, Association of Literature, Environment; Culture Canada

“The weight of history lies on the spine of memory, Williamson writes. That heft and delicate balance are palpable in these rich poems. Reading them, I felt deeply moved by the contemplation and accounting of all those weighty, perfect stones.” – Lauren Carter, poet, novelist, winner of the 2020 Margaret Laurence Award for Fiction, finalist in CBC’s 2017 Poetry Contest, winner of ROOM Poetry Contest, 2014, Writer in Residence, 2020-21 Winnipeg Millennium Library

"These poems, rich with compassion and open-hearted curiosity, are themselves perfect stones, marking place and time in evocative language." – Lorri Neilsen Glenn, former Poet Laureate, Halifax, winner of the Miramichi Reader’s Best Book for Non-fiction: Following the River, 2019, professor emerita, Mount St. Vincent University, NS.