rob mclennan: A History of the Theories of Rain, by Stephen Collis

A History of the Theories of Rain, Stephen Collis
Talonbooks, 2021

 

 

 

Vancouver poet, writer, critic, literary activist and 2019 Latner Writers' Trust Poetry Prize winner Stephen Collis’ latest is the poetry title A History of the Theories of Rain (Vancouver BC: Talonbooks, 2021), a lyric quartet that writes specifically on and around the implications and ideas of the ongoing and increasing global climate crisis. “Give me music because // I never could understand its // direct connection to // that feeling stream,” he writes, as part of the untitled opening lyric. Collis’ work has long explored the possibilities of what poetry might accomplish, responding to ongoing social concerns through poetry titles such as Anarchive (Vancouver BC: New Star Books, 2005), The Commons (Talonbooks, 2008/2014), To the Barricades (Talonbooks, 2013) and Once in Blockadia (Talonbooks, 2016). Over the years, his poetry has explored social concerns and engagements, writing and living his politics around decolonization, authority, land rights, the oppositions to the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion and the ongoing ecological crisis. His work is immediate, timely and timeless, providing amplification to what the lyric has long held as a quiet, underlying thread; by Collis, this eco-poetic is not mere flowering, but magnified. It is through such work, and the ways in which he has crafted his complex lyric of attending the unfolding these crises that Collis has become one of our most essentially-engaged contemporary poets. His, alongside the work of contemporaries such as Rita Wong and Christine Leclerc, is a rare lyric that includes actual action, as, during his participations in the protests against the Trans Mountain pipeline, he was sued by Kinder Morgan for five-point-six million dollars. “and we were not afraid,” he writes, as part of the second section, “and held each other / with our very voices // molten / in the ubiquitous dark / not brittle really / not beaten back / but material still / and here to bend the light [.]” Collis argues for acknowledgment, as well as the required response, which at the very minimum, requires the notion of resistance. In a review of David Herd’s Through (Carcanet, 2016) over at Jacket2, posted July 18, 2017, Collis writes of what he terms the “Biotariat,” as he writes:

As Susan Howe writes, “Connections between unconnected things are the unreal reality of Poetry.” This is what makes poetry such fertile ground for the thought of the Biotariat, where we must trace the links between, say, the systemic dehumanization of (certain) human beings, and the too-often denied sentience and agency of the nonhuman.

In four sections—“Future Imperfect,” “Sketch of a Poem I Will Not Have Written,” “Notes on the Derangement of Time” and “A History of the Theories of Rain”—Collis lays out and examines the facts of crisis, of crises, writing on capitalism, social implication and danger, and the ways in which we seem intent on self-destruction. “Take apart all ideas plans projects and structures,” he writes, as part of the second section, “until there is a book comprised of all the takings apart [.]” Collis writes the slow processions and the sudden turns; the long line and lines of history, working up, around and through the present moment—“I feel the depth / in the names of things / what has changed / the same nothing”—and further, into the possible future, if we are to have one. “This if written / would be pure mutuality / except nothing is pure // I don’t know nightingales / just the spotted towhee / trying its lesser song [.]”

Mostly I look quickly at the latest reports / through the cracks
between my fingers / out the corner of my eye / look away quickly /
calculate years to collapse. 

A – grass dies / B – human beings die / C – human beings are grass.

It’s years right? Rolling fields of us all relative / the wind bending the
blades back before the dawn / all in the same direction / rippling /
wave and particle / dying in drought coming back green in spring rain
the colours / we forget / the colours of the grasses / their flowers led
purple pewter scarlet / like a fever / so small yet so very many / the
detail is lost in the collective sheen. Intercalary meristem. Spiralate
movement. We’re all relative. Relatives. That was then. This is now. The
plough is in the sky. The earth is tilled by no one.

A – all civilizations collapse / B – you call this a civilization? (“Future Imperfect”)

 

 

 

 

Born in Ottawa, Canada’s glorious capital city, rob mclennan currently lives in Ottawa, where he is home full-time with the two wee girls he shares with Christine McNair. The author of more than thirty trade books of poetry, fiction and non-fiction, he won the John Newlove Poetry Award in 2010, the Council for the Arts in Ottawa Mid-Career Award in 2014, and was longlisted for the CBC Poetry Prize in 2012 and 2017. In March, 2016, he was inducted into the VERSe Ottawa Hall of Honour. His most recent poetry titles include A halt, which is empty (Mansfield Press, 2019) and Life sentence, (Spuyten Duyvil, 2019), with a further poetry title, the book of smaller, forthcoming from University of Calgary Press. In spring 2020, he won ‘best pandemic beard’ from Coach House Books via Twitter, of which he is extremely proud (and mentions constantly). He spent the 2007-8 academic year in Edmonton as writer-in-residence at the University of Alberta, and regularly posts reviews, essays, interviews and other notices at robmclennan.blogspot.com