"I Lost My Talk" is a poem by Mi'kmaq poet and songwriter Rita Joe, published in her first collection, Poems of Rita Joe, in 1978. The poem, which is autobiographical, focuses on the speaker's time at Shubenacadie Indian Residential School in Canada, a boarding school where Indigenous children were punished for speaking in their native tongue. Losing her "talk," or her ancestral language, left the speaker isolated from her heritage, community, and even her identity itself. The poem highlights the important link between language and culture, and also condemns the way in which colonialist governments may use the oppression of Indigenous languages to oppress Indigenous peoples themselves.

• Read the full text of “I Lost My Talk”

• “I Lost My Talk” Summary

• “I Lost My Talk” Themes

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    Language and Cultural Identity

    Where this theme appears in the poem:

    • Lines 1-15

• Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “I Lost My Talk”

  • Lines 1-2

    I lost my ...
    ... you took away.

    

    

    

    

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  • Lines 3-4

    When I was ...
    ... At Shubenacadie school.

    

    

    

    

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  • Lines 5-8

    You snatched it ...
    ... create like you

    

    

    

    

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  • Line 9

    The scrambled ballad, about my word.

    

    

    

    

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  • Lines 10-15

    Two ways I ...
    ... you about me.

    

    

    

    

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• “I Lost My Talk” Symbols

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    Talk

    Where this symbol appears in the poem:

    • Lines 1-2: “I lost my talk / The talk you took away.”
    • Lines 5-9: “You snatched it away: / I speak like you / I think like you / I create like you / The scrambled ballad, about my word.”
    • Lines 10-11: “Two ways I talk / Both ways I say,”
    • Line 14: “Let me find my talk”

• “I Lost My Talk” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language

  • Parallelism

    

    

    

    

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    Where parallelism appears in the poem:

    • Lines 6-8: “I speak like you / I think like you / I create like you”
    • Lines 10-11: “Two ways I talk / Both ways I say,”

  • Repetition

    

    

    

    

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    Where repetition appears in the poem:

    • Line 1: “my talk”
    • Line 2: “talk,” “away”
    • Line 5: “away”
    • Line 6: “I,” “like you”
    • Line 7: “I,” “like you”
    • Line 8: “I,” “like you”
    • Line 10: “ways,” “I”
    • Line 11: “ways,” “I”
    • Line 12: “way”
    • Line 14: “my talk”

  • Consonance

    

    

    

    

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    Where consonance appears in the poem:

    • Line 1: “lost,” “talk”
    • Line 2: “talk,” “took,” “away”
    • Line 3: “When,” “was,” “little,” “girl”
    • Line 4: “Shubenacadie,” “school”
    • Line 5: “snatched”
    • Line 6: “speak,” “like”
    • Line 7: “think,” “like”
    • Line 8: “create,” “like”
    • Line 9: “scrambled,” “ballad,” “about,” “word”
    • Line 10: “Two,” “talk”
    • Line 12: “way,” “powerful”
    • Line 14: “talk”
    • Line 15: “can,” “teach,” “about”

  • Assonance

    

    

    

    

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    Where assonance appears in the poem:

    • Line 1: “lost,” “talk”
    • Line 2: “talk”
    • Line 11: “ways,” “say”
    • Line 14: “find my”

  • Allusion

    

    

    

    

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    Where allusion appears in the poem:

    • Lines 3-4: “When I was a little girl / At Shubenacadie school.”

  • Metaphor

    

    

    

    

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    Where metaphor appears in the poem:

    • Line 9: “The scrambled ballad, about my word.”

• “I Lost My Talk” Vocabulary

  Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.

  • My talk
  • Shubenacadie school
  • Ballad
  • Scrambled
  • (Location in poem: Lines 1-2: “I lost my talk / The talk you took away.”; Lines 13-15: “So gently I offer my hand and ask, / Let me find my talk / So I can teach you about me.”)

• Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “I Lost My Talk”

  • Form

  • Meter

  • Rhyme Scheme

• “I Lost My Talk” Speaker

• “I Lost My Talk” Setting

• Literary and Historical Context of “I Lost My Talk”

• More “I Lost My Talk” Resources

  • External Resources

    • The Poem Out Loud — Watch a competitive performance of "I Lost My Talk" by Gabrielle Nebrida-Pepin for Poetry in Voice.

    • Rita Joe Song Project — A project hosted by the National Arts Centre, which invited students and teachers across Canada to create a song based on Rita Joe's “I Lost My Talk." 

    • Mi'kmaq Identity — One of a series of OpenLearn videos on Mi'kmaq identity and culture.

    • The Harmful Legacy of Shubenacadie School — An article for CBC news recounting the abusive practices of nuns at Shubenacadie Indian Residential School. 

    • The Importance of Culture, Language, and Identity — An article about the importance of culture, language, and identity from RacismNoWay, an anti-racist educational resource for Australian schools. 

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