The rough poets : reading oil-worker poetry / Melanie Dennis Unrau ; with poems by Ross Belot, S.C. Ells, Peter Christensen, Dymphny Dronyk, Mathew Henderson, Naden Parkin, Lesley Battler, Lindsay Bird, and Kelly Shepherd.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Unrau, Melanie Dennis, author.

Series:

McGill-Queen's rural, wildland, and resource studies series ; 18.

McGill-Queen's rural, wildland, and resource studies series ; 18

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Canadian poetry--20th century--History and criticism.

Canadian poetry.

Canadian poetry--21st century--History and criticism.

Petroleum industry and trade in literature.

Genre:

Literary criticism.

Physical Description:

xviii, 221 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Montreal ; Kingston ; London ; Chicago : McGill-Queen's University Press, [2024]

Summary:

"Oil workers are often typecast as rough: embodying the toxic masculinity, racism, consumerist excess, and wilful ignorance of the extractive industries and petrostates they work for. But their poetry troubles these assumptions, revealing the fear, confusion, betrayal, and indignation hidden beneath tough personas. The Rough Poets presents poetry by workers in the Canadian oil and gas industry, collecting and closely reading work published between 1938 and 2019: S.C. Ells's Northland Trails, Peter Christensen's Rig Talk, Dymphny Dronyk's Contrary Infatuations, Mathew Henderson's The Lease, Naden Parkin's A Relationship with Truth, Lesley Battler's Endangered Hydrocarbons, and Lindsay Bird's Boom Time. These writers are uniquely positioned, Melanie Dennis Unrau argues, both as petropoets who write poetry about oil and as theorists of petropoetics with unique knowledge about how to make and unmake worlds that depend on fossil fuels. Their ambivalent, playful, crude, and honest petropoetry shows that oil workers grieve the environmental and social impacts of their work, worry about climate change and the futures of their communities, and desire jobs and ways of life that are good, safe, and just. How does it feel to be a worker in the oil and gas industry in a climate emergency, facing an energy transition that threatens your way of life? Unrau takes up this question with the respect, care, and imagination necessary to be an environmentalist reader in solidarity with oil workers."-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Figures

Acknowledgments

Timeline of Oil-Worker Poetry in Canada

First Day

Introduction

The Athabaska Trail

CHAPTER 1 Father of the Tar Sands: Modernity and Wilderness in S.C. Ells's Northland Trails

The Driller Makes a Mistake

CHAPTER 2 "They make me / rough": Speaking Oil Patch in Peter Christensen's Rig Talk

Interest-Based Negotiation

CHAPTER 3 "my love is not dead yet": Living/Loving Oil and the Land in Dymphny Dronyk's Contrary Infatuations

Washout

CHAPTER 4 Tending Rusted Steel and Leased Land in Mathew Henderson's The Lease

Blue Collar Mayhem

CHAPTER 5 Mud Man: Poetry as Truth-Telling and Land Relations in Naden Parkin's A Relationship with Truth

The Petrochemical Ball

CHAPTER 6 "do not / be na̐ve": Language and the Stakes of Animacy in Lesley Battler's Endangered Hydrocarbons

Safety Reminder

CHAPTER 7 Boom Time, Giant Time, and Other Elsewhens of Lindsay Bird's Boom Time

Birds Migrate at Night, Mostly Unseen

CONCLUSION Feeling Rough: Oil-Worker Poetry, Energy Justice, and the Cultural Politics of Emotion

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Other Format:

Online version: Unrau, Melanie Dennis. Rough poets.

ISBN:

9780228022930

0228022932

9780228022947

0228022940

OCLC:

1430496588