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Written amid wildfires and atmospheric rivers,
The Middle extends Stephen Collis's investigation of threatened climate futures into a poetics of displacement and wandering. The fulcrum of a trilogy begun with
A History of the Theories of Rain,
The Middle hikes the shifting treelines of our warming world to reflect on the way all life is on the move. Focusing on the human-plant relationship, each of
The Middle's linked sequences employs various forms of citational practice, rooted in the idea of a "poetic commons," a kind of literary seed dispersal where words are blown, carried, and scattered from one textual field to another, akin to all the plants and animals in motion on our dangerously heating planet.
About the author
Stephen Collis is the author of over a dozen books of poetry and prose, including
The Commons (2008),
On the Material (2010), winner of the BC Book Prize, and
Almost Islands: Phyllis Webb and the Pursuit of the Unwritten (2018) - all published by Talonbooks.
A History of the Theories of Rain (2021) was a finalist for the Governor General's Literary Award for Poetry, and in 2019 Collis was the recipient of the Writers' Trust of Canada Latner Poetry Prize.
The Middle is the second volume of a trilogy begun with
A History of the Theories of Rain. He lives near Vancouver, on unceded Coast Salish Territory, and teaches poetry and poetics at Simon Fraser University.
Summary
Written in the midst of wildfires and atmospheric rivers, The Middle extends award-winning poet Stephen Collis’s investigation of threatened climate futures into a poetics of displacement and wandering. The fulcrum of a trilogy begun with A History of the Theories of Rain, The Middle hikes the shifting treelines of our warming world to reflect on the way all life is in motion, fleeing the rising heat. Taking up the human-plant relationship in particular, each of The Middle's linked sequences finds itself somewhere on a mountain, in the company of trees (or the ghosts of now absent trees), climbing in altitude, or heading north. Across the poem’s three sections, Collis employs various forms of citational practice, rooted in his long engagement with the idea of a “poetic commons” where writing is made out of what one is reading. This practice is a kind of entanglement, a form of literary seed dispersal, where words are blown, carried, and scattered from one textual field to another, akin to the mammals, fish, crustaceans, reptiles, rodents, birds, insects, plants, grasses, and trees in motion on our dangerously heating planet.
