Gregory Scofield

In a review of Scofield's book Witness, I Am, Nicholas Bradley wrote, "Scofield is an observer, especially of tragedies, and his poems explore, with speech that verges on song, the meaning of knowing one’s place in the world. Muskrat Woman, the first section of Witness, I Am, is a long poem about a flood—in Scofield’s words, 'a retelling, a reimagining of a much longer âtayôhkêwina—Cree Sacred Story'." Bradley also wrote, "The poems concern the living and the dead—those who have survived forms of colonial brutality, and those who must be remembered. Scofield’s distressing acts of testimony, mourning, and dissent suggest convincingly the importance of the literary arts to public discourse about matters of grave consequence."

In 2016, Scofield won the Latner Writers' Trust Poetry Prize for his lifetime body of work.

The jurors for the 2016 Latner Writers' Trust Poetry Prize were Canadian poets Jeffery Donaldson, Karen Solie and Katherena Vermette. They commented, "His forms embrace the musical, the documentary, and the experimental in a vision of risk and generosity. From raw, urban truths to the solace of Cree cadence, from the heart beat of the drum to the wax poetics of a young Louis Riel, Scofield’s range of subject, work, and style dazzles. He has courage to let us in, and the patience to help us understand."

Scofield has published eight volumes of poetry and a non-fiction memoir. He has also served as writer-in-residence at Memorial University of Newfoundland and the University of Winnipeg. He has also been a social worker dealing with street youth in Vancouver, and has taught First Nations and Métis Literature at Brandon University and the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design. Scofield is gay. He is currently an assistant professor of English literature at Laurentian University, despite being a high school dropout and not having the relevant educational background. He was the subject of a documentary film, Singing Home the Bones: A Poet Becomes Himself, in 2007.

Scofield is a Red River Métis of Cree and European ancestry. He has ancestors from the North American fur trade and the Métis residents of Kinesota, Manitoba. He speaks the Cree language, and incorporates it into his poetry. He had a difficult childhood, including poverty, abuse and separation from his parents. He described his early years in his 1999 memoir, Thunder Through My Veins.

In 1998, Scofield's aunt was killed in an unsolved crime, and this informs his recent poetry. Most days, he tweets the story of a missing or murdered indigenous woman.

Scofield won the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize in 1994 for his debut collection, The Gathering: Stones for the Medicine Wheel. In 2013, he was among many Canadians who received the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal.

Gregory Scofield (born July 20, 1966 in Maple Ridge, British Columbia) is a Canadian Métis poet, beadwork artist, dramatist and non-fiction writer. He is a graduate of the Gabriel Dumont Institute Native Human Justice Program. His written and performance art draws on Cree story-telling traditions. He has published two instruction books on doing Métis flower-beadwork for the Gabriel Dumont Institute.