 “Wailsong 4 Sydney” collects instances of a novel form of found poetry that I call the amput(ransl)ation. First, a random string of alphanumeric characters is typed by hand into Google translate, which misinterprets this string as a legitimate entry in one or another language (often, but not always, recognizing it as Arabic script). Then, one or more characters are iteratively excised from the string, producing a descending sequence of alternate translations, until not much more than a stump is left. While perusing this form, on January 10th, 2020, in the midst of the Australian bushfire crisis, I happened upon a sequence that spoke of Sydney, Australia, of greenness and heat, of smoke, and of payment. Delving a bit deeper, I identified the sequence in question, and explored various permutations of both the string and the type and order of character excisement, ultimately producing this sequence of found poetry, which serves as a dirgesong for the bushfire crisis currently underway in Australia. It is typeset here in Australia, an open-source typeface designed by Denver Ross that "takes inspiration from the arches of the Sydney Opera House to the waves of Bondi Beach." Franco Cortese is an experimental poet living in Thorold, Ontario. His poetry was longlisted for the 2019 CBC Poetry Prize and has appeared in Literary Review of Canada, The Malahat Review, Canadian Literature, The Capilano Review, filling Station, ditch, and others. His recent chapbooks include aeiou (No Press 2018), uoiea (above/ground press 2019), teksker (Simulacrum Press 2019), no mỡ, no mo, no mò (nOIR:Z 2020), lo vỡ yo uo (above/ground press 2020), wú hu uu mù iu (above/ground press, 2020), gó go gó (The Blasted Tree 2020), lő co co lỗ (Timglaset, 2020) and lù vũ yǔ (Timglaset 2020). He also has leaflets, booklets and other poetic ephemera out through The Blasted Tree, Penteract Press, and Spacecraft Press. His work has been published both within Canada and internationally, and has been anthologized in Concrete and Constraint (Penteract Press 2018) and Science Poems (Penteract Press 2020).
I NEVER GOT OVER 60 LIKES O, darlin’s When hasn’t life been expendable? Another train departs tossed on a heap of disposables Cell phones plastics mountains There is no law Only the monied This too shall pass We already know the ending We’ve seen it Left before the credits “I didn’t think it would be such a downer.” “This sucks, let’s leave.” “Why did you unfollow me?” “You unfriended me bitch” Like that’s the end of the world. Just one click In a darkened theatre We stay to the bitter end The price of the ticket To see what might happen Any surprises plot twists “I didn’t see that one coming” “I did.” The oldies the goodies The good guys show up Oft times even only one To set the captives free To take down the evil ones Shot in glorious black and white Light projected a fresh stream the cup of one’s hands When there was free water to drink “Can I have a glass of water?” “Water some water please” “My daughter needs some water.” You only think you’re tired The entire tired sick fucking world is It sucks to be tired tired of this all of this Maybe I’ll message Christopher See if they’re tired, too. KIRBY’s earlier chapbooks include Cock & Soul, Bob’s boy, The World is Fucked and Sometimes Beautiful, and She’s Having A Doris Day. Their full-length debut, This Is Where I Get Off is now in its second printing (Permanent Sleep Press, 2019) and currently being adapted for the stage. Kirby is the owner and publisher of knife | fork | book. www.jeffkirby.ca
THE HEATWAVE (after A.M. Klein) The weather cites the welling mercury; un autre mois comme ça, we'll all be dead – so say the clamours banging on our walls. In the papers, calls for carbon caps are lain next to a sea of melting rhetoric. Sunburns run red. A week, and it will break! How many stores of all their A/C units are blood-let? Outside their boiled abodes, the city tries to fight off fire with ice, cones ripple and dip, kids squeeze their Freezies warm. There are no winds to fan our fevered têtes. But it will come! One night this week a boom will wake the sweltering masses, light will flash, fat drops will pound upon our window panes, then roust from cooling rooms the sardine-tin-packed youth to a terrasse 'til autumn overtakes us yet again. Alex Manley is a Montreal-based writer whose work has appeared in Maisonneuve magazine, The Puritan, Carte Blanche, and the Academy of American Poets' Poem-a-Day feature, among others, and whose debut poetry collection, We Are All Just Animals & Plants, was published by Metatron Press in 2016.
BROWN JACQUERIE These men who talk about war like they know how to kill people yeahhhh like they've learned how to kill people professional like, in the millions Yeahhhh baby, jets, bombs, ships, drones we got it you got oil we want it you got lithium we want it You see, our people are going green We need lithium get those fuckin Indians out of the city We don't need to hear that mother earth shit unless Johnny Depp says it cause he smells nice like oil David Groulx is the author of 11 books of poetry. From Turtle Island to Gaza (Athabasca University Press) is his most recent.
TENUOUS RELATION "This year, for or the first time in memory, the monarch butterflies didn’t come . . . Last year’s low of 60 million seems great compared with the fewer than three million that have shown up so far." / NY Times, Nov. 22, 2013 terrific millionfold monarch migration in the forest of my youth in the filtered light of a morning I did not know was morning amidst populations I did not know would instruct me sexualized in the coupling force beyond mammal selection an electrical transmission below the level of sunlight filtered through towers of living monarch forests spinning cathedral glass exploded from axis a diagram of surfaces, light refracted into flocks of autonomous magnetic sensors spinning away and toward meridional centers hundreds of millions of representations each caught in the eco-swirl of its own sexual metabolic foraging exploratory hungers the task is not to become cinematic for the screen here is exploded the data streams points of light humans waving their cells network engines humming data servers grounding the flock in some undisclosed location each click an ear of corn burning off the potential in massed hives of inequality the city humming with its "own" light that is not its own burning out the fields the wilderness of flowering medicinal intelligences shrinking the margin of attainability the growth gross surplus punishes straggling monarchs only seem weak until they are collapse of the network no more visible than its rise in the shadow of swarms who crowd source explore cycling inward but what do we counter the task is not to become elegiac yet to remember clearly when there was light brought by other intelligences when the economic relations were already fucked nothing primary to experience but the orientation of the objects in this field of ontological relations massed evidence available to travelers catching the updraft of laboring hungering heat at colonial borders a boy could still hound me into those woods wanting a bit of change that wasn't in my pocket I could still be left alone with the flaming alien masses finally to catch a ride atop a load of resinous timber back of a truck loaded with logger exhaustion in the slow economic violence not yet the terror of cartels the task is to breathe in as well as out catching a bit of monarch fire in a gentle swarm in a Clear Creek Canyon above the Colorado below the towers of Zoroaster Temple, in the early light of a love whose extinction seemed impossible impossible as the solitary roving fluttering monarchs each minding its own tenuous relation minding me to care for the buried threads of now to then the spots of time and spaces stitched by migratory desires, memory, all will power the free-fall struggles down and up economical topographies of relation yet actual bodies blinking across the fossil landscape migratory swarming intelligences only dimly aware of their own orogenic and plate tectonic powers the task is to honor the contact and the fire not the program, to be methodical in action doing our thing, basking in microclimates, longing for the heart of the heat of the sun of the swarm massed in genetic code, memories stored as images impulses, without which the sprayers roll in silence across fields of shining corn bundled and sheathed in cash-clad towers only seeming to be seeds the deadly vertical updraft of minerals and nutrients exhausting the soil in row after row of green desire unmixed by memory, an engineer's paradise in name only, behind every drone a man and paymaster, behind every monarch a million who have always been relation the wing-clad boughs only seeming to be leaves but who notices when a network goes offline a constellation extinguished in the penumbra of failing telescopes Founder and editor of the influential journal ecopoetics, Jonathan Skinner is the author of Political Cactus Poems (2005), Warblers (2010), Birds of Tifft (2011), and Chip Calls (2014), and his essays have been anthologized widely. He teaches at the University of Warwick.
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
8 POEMS: SENRYU, HAIKU, KYOKA, TANKA I How did she do it Red Riding Hood, luring wolves into extinction? Was it expert marketing or her flawless marksmanship? II Is this blazing earth just angry - or signing our Eviction-notice? III The heavens last night Poured out their discontent heart Flooding our basements IV Showers in forecast After us comes the deluge Our prospectless toast Too drunk to dream a future Our off-key drinking song V While the ice cap thaws I'll regret my lusting for Gentler winter winds VI Lonely ice flake floats on lukewarm Arctic waters - my eyes are melting The edges of existence now bend toward depression VII Mid-summer sultry tiny bug bites won't disprove our insect collapse I offer my scratchy arms In pursuit of atonement VIII The city's humming I listen for sounds of hope through morning traffic Hege Jakobsen Lepri is a Norwegian-Canadian translator and writer. She returned to writing in 2011 and had her first story published in English in J Journal in 2013. She has since been published widely in Canada and the US. Her most recent work is featured or forthcoming in The New Quarterly, Carve Literary Magazine, Hobart, Agnes and True, Journal of Compressed Arts, Gone Lawn, Belletrist, Crack the Spine, Prism International and elsewhere. You find her on her on twitter @hegelincanada, Instagram: @hege.a.j.lepri and on her website: www.hegeajlepri.ca FLOTSAM bottles plastic bags underwear gum wrappers receipts caps toothbrushes lighters cups end up in the sea’s vast net of light waves heaving the weight of our waste back and forth back and forth the ocean tumbling shards of beer bottles into oblong pebbles of sea glass weaving bloated plastic bags into nooses for seagulls breaking bottle caps into bait for lantern fish Our sparkling garbage dump brims with cockles and crap. our hands throw trash overboard the giver of life receives. ACKNOWLEDGEMENT "Flotsam" was originally published in Firesmoke, Mawenzi House, 2014 Sheniz Janmohamed (MFA) is a firm believer in fostering community through collaboration, compassion and creativity. In her own practice, she strives to embody words through performance, land art and writing in the ghazal form. A poet, artist educator and land artist.
Sheniz has performed her work in venues across the world, including the Jaipur Literature Festival, Alliance Française de Nairobi and the Aga Khan Museum. Her land art has been featured at the Aga Khan Park, the Indian Summer Festival and the Art Gallery of Mississauga. Sheniz is also the author of two collections of poetry: Bleeding Light (Mawenzi House, 2010) and Firesmoke (Mawenzi House, 2014). Sheniz visits dozens of schools and organisations each year to teach, perform, and inspire creativity in her students. In 2015, She was awarded the Lois Birkenshaw-Fleming Creative Teaching Scholarship, and holds a Artist Educator Mentor certificate from the Royal Conservatory of Music (Toronto). Sheniz is also the founder of Questions for Ancestors, a blog that encourages BIPOC writers and artists across Turtle Island to ask questions of their ancestors as provide advice for their descendants. Sheniz is currently working on her third collection of ghazals. www.shenizjanmohamed.com |
AboutAn anthology of creative works devoted to the climate crisis and climate justice.
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