'This book was written over two hundred years. It was started as a colonial project. From there it developed through the use of the archive as a consideration of historical narrative. The poem employs a Susan Howe-esque archival practice that selectively disseminates Canadian short stories to think about erasure and failures of settlement: to disclose an underlying colonial reality of the pastoral, and measures of inclusion and exclusion. The poems are familial but underlying this is the glowering absence of the historic, a generative absence which exemplifies how early / prairie literature is culpable in driving a national myth which forgoes Indigenous life.
'As a child I was fascinated with rope-braiding machines. Even before I could manage the handle, I could watch them for hours. I consider tension as a form of kinetic energy. Words from archives are interwoven, assembled to mimic this type of tension. These narratives are bound to the manner in which we write the histories of our nation. We are all of these stories, and they are none of us. This rope can be used to bind, or …' (Publication summary)
Beyond Ambiguity : Tracing Literary Sites of Activism
Manchester
:
Manchester University Press
,
2021
23070912
2021
single work
criticism
'This volume completes John Kinsella’s trilogy of critical activist poetics, begun two decades ago.
'It challenges familiar topoi and normatives of poetic activity as it pertains to environmental, humanitarian and textual activism in ‘the world-at-large’ – it shows how ambiguity can be a generative force when it works from a basis of non-ambiguity of purpose. The book shows how there is a clear unambiguous position to have regarding issues of justice, but that from that confirmed point ambiguity can be an intense and useful activist tool.
'The book is an essential resource for those wishing to study Kinsella, and for those with an interest in twentieth and twenty-first-century poetry and poetics, and it will stand as an inspiring proclamation of the author's faith in the transformative power of poetry and literary activity as a force for good in the world.'
Source : publisher's blurb
Beyond Ambiguity : Tracing Literary Sites of Activism
Manchester
:
Manchester University Press
,
2021
23070912
2021
single work
criticism
'This volume completes John Kinsella’s trilogy of critical activist poetics, begun two decades ago.
'It challenges familiar topoi and normatives of poetic activity as it pertains to environmental, humanitarian and textual activism in ‘the world-at-large’ – it shows how ambiguity can be a generative force when it works from a basis of non-ambiguity of purpose. The book shows how there is a clear unambiguous position to have regarding issues of justice, but that from that confirmed point ambiguity can be an intense and useful activist tool.
'The book is an essential resource for those wishing to study Kinsella, and for those with an interest in twentieth and twenty-first-century poetry and poetics, and it will stand as an inspiring proclamation of the author's faith in the transformative power of poetry and literary activity as a force for good in the world.'
Source : publisher's blurb
