Once in blockadia / Stephen Collis.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Collis, Stephen, 1965- author.

Contributor:

Laura Jan Meyerson Poetry Fund.

Standardized Title:

Poems. Selections

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Human ecology--Poetry.

Human ecology.

Protest movements--Poetry.

Protest movements.

Genre:

Poetry.

Physical Description:

135 pages : illustrations (some color) ; 22 cm

Place of Publication:

Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada : Talonbooks, [2016]

Summary:

"In this collection of long and serial poems, Stephen Collis returns to the commons, and to his ongoing argument with romantic poet William Wordsworth, to rethink the relationship between human beings and the natural world in the Anthropocene. Collis circumambulates Tar Sands tailings ponds and English lakes and stands in the path of pipelines, where on Burnaby Mountain in 2014 he was sued for $5.6 million by energy giant Kinder Morgan, whose lawyers glossed Collis's writing in court by noting that "underneath the poetry is a description of how the barricade was constructed." Called by Eden Robinson "the most dangerous poet in Canada," in Once in Blockadia Collis is in search of how we can continue to resist as we only begin to understand the extent of our complicity and the depths of the predicament we are in. The bulk of Once in Blockadia is made up of two long sequences evolving from found texts, and two long poems that engage with Wordsworth. The two found texts relate to two blockades Collis was involved in: one blocking the flood of commodities into the Port of Vancouver, and the other blocking the potential flood of oil out of Vancouver. In both cases the poetry and "notes" that follow offer glimpses into the documentary "fact" of events, the resistance behind the blockade, the reasons for them, and the complex of resistant affects driving the events. The two Wordsworthian long poems involve two walks one in the Alberta Tar Sands, and the other in Wordsworth's beloved Grasmere. In the first instance Wordsworthian description is applied to the impossible to aestheticize Tar Sands; in the second, Wordsworth's own beloved home is revealed not as an alternative to the destruction of extraction, but as conditioned, surrounded, and structured by it."-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Subversal 3

The Court Transcript 5

Thirteen Trees 10

Blockadia 17

Shell Scenarios 43

Coda: Blockade Chant 56

Reading Wordsworth in the Tar Sands 59

The Port Transcript 79

During the organ writing tradition 89

Your purists are where we are going 90

Rolling temporary disruptions 91

On the lumen of the global movement 92

Going cold out here at yellow dildo ports 93

Okay to stop the flow of commerce 94

The discussion with the blockade 95

Bucket report 96

Often living on the margins 97

Democratic not sexy 98

Talking to shut down 99

In the gap nourishment 100

We affect workers a lot 101

The way to do that is what not to do 102

Up in the middle of the province of france wally 103

I know bankers are people 104

Bulletin of the common 106

Home at Gasmere 109

One Against Another 125.

Notes:

Poems.

Local Notes:

Acquired for the Penn Libraries with assistance from the Laura Jan Meyerson Poetry Fund.

ISBN:

9781772010152

1772010154

OCLC:

944463842

Publisher Number:

99970188809