Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t7fkt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-24T23:13:12.013Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

10 - Blockade Chants and Cloud-Nets: Terminal Poetics of the Anthropocene

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 February 2021

Timothy Yu
Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin
Get access

Summary

Poetry emerging under the sign of the Anthropocene must, like all cultural work, contend with the terminal horizon of climate change. New levels of social and environmental complexity open up the possibility for, and the necessity of, uncommon forms of solidarity, in resistance movements run through with insurmountable difference. Poetry that resonates with the chants of protests and, provoked by the indeterminate cloud architecture of digital networks, attempts to weave what cannot be woven, convokes these forms of solidarity while exposing the seams of difference. One important seam is a temporal difference between those for whom the Anthropocene harbors an imminent collective future and those for whom it names a long and already too present collective experience of oppression. In many respects, place rather than identity, site rather than form or figure, determine the trajectories of this writing. Discussing poetry by Juliana Spahr, Danez Smith, Stephen Collis, and Layli Long Soldier, this chapter sounds some of the key differences activating the uncommon solidarities of North American poetry in the emergent awareness of the Anthropocene.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

Bernes, Jasper, Clover, Joshua, and Spahr, Juliana. “Self-abolition of the Poet (Part 3).” Jacket2, January 23, 2014, www.jacket2.org/commentary/self-abolition-poet-part-3/Google Scholar
Brannen, Peter. “The Anthropocene Is a Joke.” The Guardian, August 13, 2019, www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/08/arrogance-anthropocene/595795/Google Scholar
Byrd, Don. Charles Olson’s Maximus. University of Illinois Press, 1980.Google Scholar
Campbell, Chris. “This Poet Is Tied for Longest Jail Sentence Yet for a Burnaby Pipeline Protest.” Burnaby Now, August 22, 2019, www.burnabynow.com/news/this-poet-is-tied-for-longest-jail-sentence-yet-for-a-burnaby-pipeline-protest-1.23923285/Google Scholar
Chakrabarty, Dipesh. “The Climate of History: Four Theses.” Critical Inquiry vol. 35, Winter 2009, pp. 197222.Google Scholar
Clark, Timothy. “Scale.” Telemorphosis: Theory in the Era of Climate Change, Vol. 1, edited by Cohen, Tom. Open Humanities Press, 2012, pp. 148166.Google Scholar
Clarke, Killian and Koçak, Korhan. “Eight Years after Egypt’s Revolution, Here’s What We’ve Learned about Social Media and Protest.” Washington Post, January 25, 2019, www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2019/01/25/eight-years-after-egypts-revolution-heres-what-weve-learned-about-social-media-and-protest/Google Scholar
Clover, Joshua and Spahr, Juliana. “Gender Abolition and Ecotone War.” Anthropocene Feminisms, edited by Grusin, Richard. University of Minnesota Press, 2017, pp. 147–68.Google Scholar
Collis, Stephen. Once in Blockadia. Talon Books, 2016.Google Scholar
Collis, Stephen. “On Embedded Poetry.” Jacket2, August 7, 2015, www.jacket2.org/article/embedded-poetry/Google Scholar
Davison, Nicola. “The Anthropocene Epoch: Have We Entered a New Phase of Planetary History?” The Guardian, May 30, 2019, www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/may/30/anthropocene-epoch-have-we-entered-a-new-phase-of-planetary-history/Google Scholar
Donovan, Thom. Occupy Poetics. Essay Press, 2015. www.essaypress.org/ep-33/Google Scholar
Farrier, David. Anthropocene Poetics: Deep Time, Sacrifice Zones, and Extinction. University of Minnesota Press, 2019.Google Scholar
Global Climate Change: Evidence.” NASA Global Climate Change and Global Warming: Vital Signs of the Planet. Jet Propulsion Laboratory / National Aeronautics and Space Administration, July 20, 2020, https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/global-temperature/Google Scholar
Grusin, Richard, editor. Anthropocene Feminism. University of Minnesota Press, 2017.Google Scholar
Hansen, James. “Game Over for the Climate.” The New York Times, May 9, 2012, www.nytimes.com/2012/05/10/opinion/game-over-for-the-climate.htmlGoogle Scholar
Haraway, Donna. “Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Plantationocene, Chthulucene: Making Kin.” Environmental Humanities vol. 6, 2015, pp. 159165.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hillman, Brenda. Seasonal Works with Letters on Fire. Wesleyan University Press, 2013.Google Scholar
IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change). Summary for Policymakers. Global Warming of 1.5°C. An IPCC Special Report on the impacts of global warming of 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels and related global greenhouse gas emission pathways, in the context of strengthening the global response to the threat of climate change, sustainable development, and efforts to eradicate poverty, edited by V. Masson-Delmotte et al. World Meteorological Organization, 2018, www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/sites/2/2019/05/SR15_SPM_version_report_LR.pdfGoogle Scholar
Keller, Lynn. Recomposing Ecopoetics: North American Poetry of the Self-Conscious Anthropocene. University of Virginia Press, 2017.Google Scholar
Klein, Naomi. This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs The Climate. Simon & Schuster, 2014.Google Scholar
Leahy, Stephen. “This Is the World’s Most Destructive Oil Operation – and It’s Growing.” National Geographic, April 11, 2019, www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2019/04/alberta-canadas-tar-sands-is-growing-but-indigenous-people-fight-back/Google Scholar
Long Soldier, Layli. Whereas. Minneapolis: Graywolf Press, 2017.Google Scholar
Long Soldier, Layli “There’s the Death Sentence Working Alongside the Literary Sentence. Layli Long Soldier, interviewed by Kaveh Akbar.” Divedapper, October 9, 2017, www.divedapper.com/interview/layli-long-soldier/Google Scholar
Mitchell, Timothy. Carbon Democracy: Political Power in the Age of Oil. Verso, 2011.Google Scholar
Moore, Jason W., editor. Anthropocene or Capitalocene? Nature, History, and the Crisis of Capitalism. PM Press, 2016.Google Scholar
Morton, Timothy. Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology after the End of the World. University of Minnesota Press, 2013.Google Scholar
Nikiforuk, Andrew. Tar Sands: Dirty Oil and the Future of a Continent. Greystone Books, 2010.Google Scholar
Olson, Charles. The Maximus Poems, edited by Butterick, George F.. University of California Press, 1983.Google Scholar
OUP (Oxford University Press). “Turnt.” Lexico, n.d., www.lexico.com/definition/turnt/Google Scholar
Owen, Denis F. and Wiegert, Richard G.. “Mutualism between Grasses and Grazers: An Evolutionary Hypothesis.” Oikos vol. 36, no. 3, March 1981, pp. 376378.Google Scholar
Ritchie, Hannah. “Where in the world do people emit the most CO2?” Our World in Data, October 4, 2019, www.ourworldindata.org/per-capita-co2Google Scholar
Smith, Danez. Don’t Call Us Dead. London: Chatto & Windus, 2017.Google Scholar
Smith, Danez. “Tonight, in Oakland.” Poetry Foundation with PoetryNow, 2015, www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/58027/tonight-in-oakland/Google Scholar
Solnick, Sam. Poetry and the Anthropocene: Ecology, Biology and Technology in Contemporary British and Irish Poetry. Routledge, 2017.Google Scholar
Spahr, Juliana. That Winter the Wolf Came. Commune Editions, 2015.Google Scholar
Staples, Heidi Lynn and King, Amy, editors. Big Energy Poets: Ecopoetry Thinks Climate Change. BlazeVOX, 2017.Google Scholar
Vicuña, Cecilia. Cloud-Net. Art in General, 1999.Google Scholar
Wallace-Wells, David. The Uninhabitable Earth: Life after Warming. Penguin, 2019.Google Scholar
Whitman, Walt. Poetry and Prose, edited by Kaplan, Justin. Library of America, 1996.Google Scholar
Wong, Rita. Undercurrent. Nightwood Editions, 2015.Google Scholar
Woods, Derek. “Scale Critique for the Anthropocene.” Minnesota Review no. 83, 2014 (New Series), pp. 133142.Google Scholar
Wordsworth, William. The Poems: Volume One, edited by O’Hayden, John. Penguin, 1977.Google Scholar
Yusoff, Kathryn. A Billion Black Anthropocenes or None. University of Minnesota Press, 2018.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×