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.
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CARHENGE Pollok Free State, 1995 (i.m. Colin Macleod) New car smell rammed into the roadbed until it stinks of the earth’s gut: muddy leaves, wet dog, plum-cake. Lichen-rust tectonic under bonnets, engines furred. Headlight bulbs are goldfish bowls, tenantless. Doors pucker with each slam and the boot flaps like a gull-wing. Twin-exhausts are organ pipes, emptying. Everything natural, every thing resourced: we make the things that make us, moulded or vulcanised. Blacked tyres made up with stibnite. When we fire them, rubber drips from the wheel-arches like hot sugar, sweet petroarticles of faith on the tongue. We circle each instant monument, generous heretics, knowing these are ugly gods – bitter in the stomach, black in the lung.
ANIMAL TRIALS: STATEMENT FROM THE TRIAL OF THE WEEVILS OF SAINT JULIEN In the spring of 1587…some weevils were arraigned before the ecclesiastical court in St Jean-de-Maurienne for despoiling the vineyards of St Julien. John Harwood, ‘Deliver Us from Weevils’, Literary Review, August 2013 If I may speak on behalf of my sisters who, of late, have sprung bright from the soil and turned these vineyards into frail stock and failed wines; at no time did we act contrary to our creation; and, indeed, as you will know Reverend Father, your wormy books spell out in calfskin and ink, that we precede your own ape-like standing in the Great Chain of Being. God created animals first, – each creeping thing – and gave us every green herb for food. If I may be so bold: the holy vine-leaf sweetens in our grubbing mouths; the grape swells for us, juicy globes without sin. You might damn us to desist but you would do well to remember this: this trial will not bring the control you crave. Insects are on the side of the angels and we shall turn you out, even unto the grave. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS "Carhenge" first published in The Scores, then Sacrifice Zones (Red Squirrel, 2020) "Containerization" first published in Gutter, then Stitch (Tapsalteerie, 2018) "Animal Trials: Statement from the Trial of the Weevils of Saint Julien" published in Sacrifice Zones (Red Squirrel, 2020) Samuel Tongue's first collection is Sacrifice Zones (Red Squirrel, 2020) and he has published two pamphlets: Stitch (Tapsalteerie, 2018) and Hauling-Out (Eyewear, 2016). Poems have appeared in Magma, The Compass, Finished Creatures, Gutter, The Interpreter's House, Envoi and elsewhere. Samuel is Project Coordinator at the Scottish Poetry Library in Edinburgh and he lives in Glasgow. www.samueltongue.com; Twitter: @SamuelTongue
YOU HAVE TO LOVE THEM ENOUGH TO LET THEM BE WILD That’s what Steve said about the mustangs up on Pryor Mountain – no sugar cubes, no carrots no coaxing, stroking, gentling no whispering no ropes, no tires, no pick up trucks no dust storm swing low choppers no Judas horse no gathering, no holding pens no PZP, no freeze brand no breaking in, no putting down no auction block, no slaughterhouse no flank strap, no fast track no stockyard, no consignment no snaffles, bridles, saddles, spurs no blankets, shoes or blinders no rodeo, no latigo, no cincha no clipping, combing, currying no conchos, braids or bells no ranches, no reata no binder twine for breech births no ligatures, no doctoring of tears & rends & bites no vaccination, no inoculation no sterilization no intervention just bales & bales of air seep water, galleta grass the animal vegetable mineral earth exacting, punishing, available Kathleen McCracken is the author of eight collections of poetry including Blue Light, Bay and College (Penumbra Press, 1991), which was shortlisted for the Governor General's Award for Poetry. A bilingual English/Portuguese edition of her poetry entitled Double Self Portrait with Mirror: New and Selected Poems, and featuring a preface by Medbh McGuckian, was published by the Brazilian press Editora Ex Machina in 2016. She is the recipient of several distinguished poetry prizes in Canada and Ireland, and has held Ontario Arts Council, Poetry Ireland and Northern Ireland Arts Council awards. Kathleen is currently Lecturer in Creative Writing and Contemporary Literature at Ulster University, Northern Ireland.
PLASTIC I ought to start with someone else's gain, step outside myself, put on the red and distant visor, be the other queen. Remember what is still to come. Forget. An ocean, say, with pebbles full of eyes – or what were once the outer skins of sight – how beautiful they are, intact and white against the deadened grey, intense cerise. Or maybe sand instead; the other side of memory. A hundred million minds meaningless now. A sparrow hops across snow. A dog barks. DIRECTION The wishbone though. Intact and delicate like a canoe slicing through the nothingness that should have been a heartbeat. Strength so often gets overlooked in the pink hour of dried blood. And so we miss the open mouth of determination, the way a foot is lifted not towards or away from but against. Ayesha Chatterjee is the author of two poetry collections, The Clarity of Distance, and Bottles and Bones. Her work has appeared in journals across the world and been translated into French and Slovene. Chatterjee is past president of the League of Canadian Poets and chair of the League’s Feminist Caucus. She is poetry advisor for Exile magazine.
BUSHFIRE There is one road in and out – mountain to sea and back again. We take it while we still can, trail the steady line of traffic climbing towards a choked sky. Streams only travel in one direction or dry up in heatwaves such as this. The temperatures are still rising. Last night, as the children slept, we watched light streak across the sky illuminating our shack on the hill – the back steps built close to jagged shrubs and grass. This morning we packed everything and left, shoved pink flip-flops and beach-balls into the boot, headed north. We saw flames above the trees. By nightfall that road was blistered, nothing but a scorched leaf-littered underpass, a net for fiery embers and sparks. Burning strips of eucalypt bark leapt from one side of the black lake to the other. We watch the news, recognise place names, on digital maps, not meant for tourists. We walked those beaches where huge groups gather, waiting for the ferocious fires to burn themselves out, return again to ash-dusted patches of land. BARGAINING When life comes down to a headspace of air beneath a jetty – the atmosphere toxic – and above swirling tornadoes of fire, the house burning down to the ground, trees glowing scarlet in the haze, hissing, spitting out sparks, and a fireball sun beaming yellow, eucalypts exploding under a Mercurian orange-streaked sky – you cling to wood, cling to your grandchildren, let the youngest lock fingers around your neck, her blonde curls bobbing on the cold surface, her eyes wide, lips a thin, pale line – wonder where their mother is, if she’s praying, check for five heads above water. Make your case. Stephanie Conn is a poet and current PhD Researcher from Northern Ireland. Her first collection The Woman on the Other Side (Doire Press, 2016) was shortlisted for the Shine/Strong Award for Best First Collection. Her pamphlet Copeland’s Daughter (Smith/Doorstep, 2016) won the Poetry Business Poetry Competition. Her most recent collection Island was published by Doire Press in 2018. Stephanie is a multi-award winning poet, including the inaugural Seamus Heaney Award for New Writing. She is the recipient of a range of Arts Council awards and has read her work locally, nationally and internationally. Find out more at https://stephanieconn.org/. Follow @StephanieConn2
IF TINY CRYSTALS FORM CLOSE TO THE EARTH’S SURFACE THEY FORM DIAMOND DUST My antler heart grows hooves. I follow the lead from the pack. Find shelter in a drunken forest-- what species isn’t at risk. Insulating properties of snow keep me warm-- trapped air between each flake. With body heat and earth-transfer heat my home becomes a snowbank. It’s not the hare’s scream that haunts, it’s the antecedent silence. THE TREES we fill ourselves up with slow-banked health push off the not needed with the growth behind it we tick silent rings inside our own xylem clocks each wound is sealed with home-spun adhesive we synthesize sunshine to a flameless fire we shed to survive to burn spring green INTERSECTIONS All parts have a line with never end. Ongoing fury—burns a shatter zone. Cries by a gate can’t slip out, they hover. Hold blue in your hands. Go on, cup sky. This isn’t illusion. The sound of absence is your boat coming in. The work is in the meadow. It’s hard to put past in a safe place. Some eyes see, if not birds. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS “If Tiny Crystals Form Close to The Earth’s Surface They Form Diamond Dust” first published in the UK literary journal Stag Hill Literary Journal “The Trees” first published in the LCP anthology: Heartwood: a League of Canadian Poets Anthology “Intersections” published in the online UK journal/website Burning House Press Catherine Graham is an award-winning Toronto-based writer. Her sixth poetry collection, The Celery Forest, was named a CBC Best Book of the Year, appears on the CBC Books Ultimate Canadian Poetry List and was a finalist for the Fred Cogswell Award for Excellence in Poetry. Her Red Hair Rises with the Wings of Insect was a finalist for the Raymond Souster Poetry Award and the CAA Poetry Award. Her debut novel Quarry won an Independent Publisher Book Awards gold medal for fiction, “The Very Best!” Book Awards for Best Fiction and was a finalist for the Sarton Women’s Book Award for Contemporary Fiction and the Fred Kerner Book Award. She teaches creative writing at the University of Toronto where she won an Excellence in Teaching Award and is a previous winner of the Toronto International Festival of Authors’ Poetry NOW competition. Æther: an out-of-body lyric will appear in 2020 with Wolsak and Wynn. Visit her at www.catherinegraham.com Follow her on Instagram and Twitter @catgrahampoet
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AboutWatch Your Head is an online journal of creative works devoted to the climate crisis and climate justice.
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Watch Your Head: Writers & Artists Respond to the Climate Crisis
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