Arctic Songs: A Journey Towards a New Tradition From Pre-Contact to Contemporary Inuit Poetry

Inuit poetry has an inherently concrete nature, whether evinced in song-poems collected in the oral tradition era, or in modern-day poetry written from the twentieth century onward. I propose, however, that the tangible observational poetry of the past has slowly been transforming into a new tradition. Novel ways of expression such as figurative language and philosophical thinking have been employed by contemporary Inuit poets. The transitions from literal to figurative language and from straight-for- ward to philosophical thinking are manifestations of the change in Inuit life and writing. Contemporary Inuit poetry is not abstract in the strictest sense of the word, but abstraction is there in the poems: in the metaphysical questions they pose, in their modern atmosphere and diction. This shift in artistic expression results in an emerging poetic tradition that is more accessible to a worldwide readership.