Billy-Ray Belcourt — Subarctica

Poetry Unbound

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4.9 • 3.9K Ratings

🗓️ 2 March 2026

⏱️ 18 minutes

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Summary

Will you leave this episode feeling uplifted, envious, curious, or something else entirely? Yes. Billy-Ray Belcourt’s poem “Subarctica” transports you to a vividly specific time — “the coldest December / on record, I haven’t left my mother’s / house in over a week” — where the primary view is of poplars in “a tiny schoolyard”. Amid the simplicity and snow, the speaker shifts their perspective, seeing beyond their past and towards the wonder in their present and in what is to come. We invite you to subscribe to Pádraig’s weekly Poetry Unbound Substack, read the Poetry Unbound books and his newest work, Kitchen Hymns, or listen to all our Poetry Unbound episodes.

Transcript

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0:00.0	My name is Padraig Otuma and years ago in my late 20s I was doing a meditation practice
0:08.0	and the instruction was each morning to spend 10 minutes in silence or something and to ask yourself
0:14.4	what emotion was coming to. And you know I suppose maybe because of some pain and also a propensity to melodrama,
0:22.6	you know, I was quite prepared for pain or difficulty or struggle or all kinds of things to come towards me.
0:29.6	And when I finished this meditation practice, it was because one morning, with the absolute clarity of dawn, it became clear to me that on the horizon for me was happiness.
0:43.1	And I got up and walked out of the room where I was doing the meditation, thinking, absolutely not.
0:47.4	I can't cope with that.
0:48.4	I would have rather faced pain than face happiness.
0:51.1	And I was shocked to think, how did that happen?
0:53.8	My body made the decision.
0:55.6	What was my rejection of that?
0:57.0	How was I so fundamentally oriented against something that might be good?
1:02.9	It took me a long time to reflect on that.
1:05.1	And in a certain sense, both physically as well as emotionally
1:09.0	and maybe with something like maturity, go back into that room.
1:20.3	Sub-Arctica by Billy Ray Belcourt.
1:25.4	Because it's the coldest December on record, I haven't left my mother's house in
1:31.9	over a week. I love how simple it is to live right now, it so rarely is, how small and
1:39.8	inconsequential my desires are, which rarely are. It would be easy to continue on in this way,
1:49.0	hemmed in on all sides by bright light.
1:53.0	At last, Lord, the whiteness of the world doesn't frighten me.
1:59.0	At last, Lord, I am not my anguish. Outside the window, a row of
	...

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