undercurrent

Wong, Rita

ISBN 10: 0889713081 / ISBN 13: 9780889713086

Published by Blewointment, 2015

About this Item

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Seller Inventory # 001873378U

Bibliographic Details

• Title: undercurrent
• Publisher: Blewointment
• Publication Date: 2015
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0889713081
• ISBN 13: 9780889713086
• Binding: paperback
• Edition: Illustrated.
• Condition: Good

About this title

Synopsis

The water belongs to itself. undercurrent reflects on the power and sacredness of water―largely underappreciated by too many―whether it be in the form of ocean currents, the headwaters of the Fraser River or fluids in the womb. Exploring a variety of poetic forms, anecdote, allusion and visual elements, this collection reminds humanity that we are water bodies, and we need and deserve better ways of honouring this.

Poet Rita Wong approaches water through personal, cultural and political lenses. She humbles herself to water both physically and spiritually: "i will apprentice myself to creeks & tributaries, groundwater & glaciers / listen for the salty pulse within, the blood that recognizes marine ancestry." She witnesses the contamination of First Nations homelands and sites, such as Gregoire Lake near Fort McMurray, AB: "though you look placid, peaceful dibenzothiophenes / you hold bitter, bitumized depths." Wong points out that though capitalism and industry are supposed to improve our quality of life, they're destroying the very things that give us life in the first place. Listening to and learning from water is key to a future of peace and creative potential.

undercurrent emerges from the Downstream project, a multifaceted, creative collaboration that highlights the importance of art in understanding and addressing the cultural and political issues related to water. The project encourages public imagination to respect and value water, ecology and sustainability. Visit downstream.ecuad.ca.

About the Author

Rita Wong is a poet and scholar whose writing attends to ecological justice and decolonial love. She has written several books of poetry including monkeypuzzle; sybil unrest (with Larissa Lai); undercurrent; perpetual (with Cindy Mochizuki); beholden (with Fred Wah); current, climate; and forage, which won the 2008 Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize and was the 2011 Canada Reads Poetry champion. Wong is the recipient of the 2024 Latner Griffin Writers’ Trust Poetry Prize and also won the Jim Wong-Chu Emerging Writers Award from the Asian Canadian Writers Workshop. She is an associate professor in critical and cultural studies at Emily Carr University of Art and Design. She lives on unceded Coast Salish territories, also known as Vancouver.