PORTALS
1. polarities
inhabit a body that seeks unity
2. industry
smashes against grand nature, wealth and poverty, health and illness
3. colours and sound fuse to form spirit
4. everything
supposedly exists in opposition
5. pivots against
intuition
6.
center your feet to
remember something we used to know how to do
7. geometric
patterns form in sand, water, and oil to create spirals found in the liver
8. transformation
is the crux of death
HOW THEORY WORKS
Theory is a process of shaming. Theory
is harmful. Theory is out of context. Theory avoids emotions. Theory injures.
Theory is a toolbox. Theory is a hammer. Theory isn’t about the critic. Theory
needs to be accessible. Theory theorizes. Theory should speak to a larger
audience. Theory unpacks. Theory needs to be responsible. Theory inhabits a
world. Theory creates fields of study. Theory tracks. Theory needs to take
ownership. Theory justifies. Theory is a science. Theory is opera. Theory
blurs. Theory is a missionary. Theory is finding validity. Theory needs room
for elasticity. Theory is emotional. Theory creates jobs for critics. Theory
grew up in poverty. Theory entered the academy. Theory isn’t a church. Theory
brings pencils. Theory is happening out in the world. Theory takes place in the
shower. Theory inhabits. Theory queers. Theory dissects. Theory is not a
structural man. Theory is a structural person. Theory is articulation. Theory
unpacks. Theory codes. Theory categorizes. Theory is topos. Theory intersects.
Theory puts things into boxes. Theory thinks. Theory is how authority works.
Theory raises questions among words. Theory emotes. Theory is a function of
language. Theory develops. Theory is complicated. Theory understands texts.
Theory pivots. Theory questions. Theory
symbolizes. Theory knows the code. Theory situates. Theory is hidden in the
story. Theory approaches. Theory is a human process. Theory borrows. Theory is
meaning. Theory is a mode of poetics.
Theory responds. Theory believes the whole world is a text. Theory
clothes. Theory is possible. Theory shapes. Theory is being named at birth.
Theory builds. Theory cracks things open. Theory pushes back. Theory ventures
out of the text. Theory bleeds. Theory
decodes. Theory isn’t the value of structure. Theory gifts. Theory is concerned
about emotional labour of cats, how their purrs calm us. Theory is renaming.
Theory works. Theory has no natural locus. Theory is a kind of kinship. Theory
anticipates. Theory is inherently selective. Theory draws. Theory fabricates
meanings. Theory plays. Theory echoes patterns. Theory voices. Theory
feminizes. Theory is jealousy. Theory parallels. Theory encodes. Theory acts.
Theory produces theory. Theory is a meeting between the reader and the text. Theory
names. Theory is dichotomy. Theory opens. Theory is praxis. Theory is
connective. Theory blooms. Theory ruptures. Theory cockblocks. Theory has
consequences. Theory measures. Theory pluralizes. Theory is fashion. Theory is
part of the Indigenous context. Theory is when the author isn’t there.
Theory offers a glass of water.
Shannon Webb-Campbell is a mixed
Indigenous (Mi’kmaq) settler poet, writer, and critic. Her books include: Still
No Word (Breakwater 2015), the recipient of Eagle Canada’s Out in Print
Award, and I Am A Body of Land (Book*hug 2019). Shannon holds a MFA in
Creative Writing from University of British Columbia, and a MA in English
Literature at Memorial University of Newfoundland and Labrador, and is a
doctoral student at the University of New Brunswick in the Department of
English. She is the editor of Visual Arts News Magazine.