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Proceeds will be donated to RAVEN ​& Climate Justice Toronto.
A warning, a movement, a collection borne of protest.
In Watch Your Head, poems, stories, essays, and artwork sound the alarm on the present and future consequences of the climate emergency. Ice caps are melting, wildfires are raging, and species extinction is accelerating. Dire predictions about the climate emergency from scientists, Indigenous land and water defenders, and striking school children have mostly been ignored by the very institutions – government, education, industry, and media – with the power to do something about it.

Writers and artists confront colonization, racism, and the social inequalities that are endemic to the climate crisis. Here the imagination amplifies and humanizes the science. These works are impassioned, desperate, hopeful, healing, transformative, and radical.
​

This is a call to climate-justice action.

...Watch Your Head does not disappoint. It serves as a warning to heed, a reminder to be thought of often, and a well-thought-out piece of art. Throughout the anthology, readers encounter pieces that provoke and insist, demanding attention, consideration, action, and creativity. Essays and stories and images alike bring about questions and statements on Indigenous rights, white privilege, exploitation of land and people, colonial power structures, place, home, language, and imagination.
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This anthology is not to be missed. The pandemic may have defined our year, but the climate crisis defines our time in geological history. See how this roster of talented writers and artists advance the conversation, put the crisis in context and call for climate justice.
                                                     
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The Quarantine Review
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Watch Your Head is on hiatus until 2023. Check back for submission details in the new year.

POETRY: AMY LEBLANC

7/12/2020

 
YERSINIA PESTIS IN ALBERTA
During the bubonic plague, Thieves’ Oil (a blend
                 of clove, lemon, cinnamon, eucalyptus, and rosemary) 
was placed on hands, ears, temples, feet, and inside of
beak-like masks to avoid catching the plague.

​Clove:
 
It will be manageable at first.
 
a brief tremor in the arms and legs,
squirrels will drop from electrical wires
and robins will lose their voice.
 
The pain will be no brighter
than a flickering candle
 
at first.
 
 
 
Lemon:
 
A man on a podium
will tell you not to worry.
 
The men behind will nod.
 
They will post signs
telling you to exercise
reasonable precautions.
 
 
 
Cinnamon:
 
You will sink your body
beneath bathwater.
 
You can ignore the
darkness in the sides
of your ribcage. You cannot
avoid the shadows on
your fingertips.
 
 
 
Eucalyptus:
 
It will get better
before it gets worse.
 
To contain the infection,
gathering in groups
will be prohibited.
 
The tremors will return
and they will be violent.
 
You must always wear
long pants to keep
the insects from your ankles.
 
 
 
Rosemary:
 
If you find dead birds,
leave them be.
Avoid physical contact--
it can spread
through saliva of the infected.
Wrap black thread around fingertips
to keep the sickness contained:
 
Stay home,
live alone,
and abstain.

Amy LeBlanc is an MA student in English Literature and creative writing at the University of Calgary and Managing Editor at filling Station magazine. Amy's debut poetry collection, I know something you don’t know, was published with Gordon Hill Press in March 2020. Her novella "Unlocking" will be published by the UCalgary Press in their Brave and Brilliant Series in 2021. Her work has appeared in Room, PRISM International, and the Literary Review of Canada among others. She is a recipient of the 2020 Lieutenant Governor of Alberta Emerging Artist Award.

    About

    Watch Your Head is an online journal of creative works devoted to the climate crisis and climate justice. 

    New work is published monthly!
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    Watch Your Head: Writers & Artists Respond to the Climate Crisis
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    October 2020
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​​List of Contributors.
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