Stephen Collis, The Middle

 

I tried to speak of the
times but there were
too many and
                        glancing
some like blows turned

in a twilight they had
created turned and I’m
sure like a bird or
something more seed-likeso

/ even the mighty riverburned /

and darting bent back
on their lines of flight
so that the yellow trees
were our fellow
                          travellers

and gave what they had to
spore or to flames we
took to be the earth’sown
vascular system unlockedby the
hot wind was ourbreathing was
                                                    common
as the dense mycelial air(“FIRST MOVEMENT”)

Vancouver poet, editor, writer and critic Stephen Collis’ latest full-length poetry titleis The Middle (Vancouver BC: Talonbooks, 2024), furthering his array of poetrycollections that speak to elements of climate crisis, social politics, communityand human responsibility that include Anarchive (Vancouver BC: New StarBooks, 2005), The Commons (Talonbooks, 2008/2014), To the Barricades (Talonbooks, 2013) [see my review of such here], Once in Blockadia (Talonbooks, 2016) [see my review of such here] and A History of the Theories of Rain (Talonbooks, 2021)[see my review of such here]. Each collection of his to date is crafted as abook-length poem, but one that has evolved into an extended, ongoing trajectoryof thought, writing from the deepest part of the centre. “To be in the middleis to be in relation,” he writes as part of his “PREFACE,” “moving between.” Acrossa sequence of “MOVEMENTS” and numbered “CANTOS,” it is curious to see theevolution of his ongoing work, and how he sets himself firmly in the traditionand foundation of the work of the late Robin Blaser (1925-2009): if the forestis indeed holy, one might suggest, then it requires protecting. As his “PREFACE”continues, a bit further along: “This long poem grown from the middle of lifecomes in three parts. The first finds its seeds in the assembling of a smalllibrary of Robin Blaser’s books – a decade after the poet’s death, his booksarrived at the university where I work, like a long-whispered echo through thetrees. so I ran through the Holy Forest like a madman – there was some urgency,the librarians said – so I ran, pulling quotations from volumes like branchesbroken from the trees, apples caught as they fell.”

The deep middleness ofthings compels me – this fraught stretch of life between certain pasts (let’srecall, if only a few, colonial land grabs, empires in their always-newclothes, vast carbon incinerations) and uncertain futures (can we yet dream ofa time when all will come to have a relationship with the earth that iswelcoming and mutually sustaining?). I am writing this in a winged hut at theback of my mind, which is to say deep in an imaginary forest (where there areno actual trees) – a place I find whenever I’m surrounded by books and silence.That’s a middle of things that necessarily feels like respite, an eddy in theflow, as opposed to the middleness that feels like a slow-motion tumbling – inmedias res – as the planet tips, and the turtle sloughs off that’s beenbuilt off its back.

The Middle presents itself as a book-length poem ofperpetual love, despite all ecological trauma we’ve inflicted upon the both theplanet and ourselves, but articulating the conflict held between that devastation,that love. Self-described as an extension of Collis’ ongoing “investigation ofthreatened climate futures into a poetics of displacement and wandering,” TheMiddle is the second volume of a projected trilogy; as a layering of onepoem atop another, an expansive and introspective questioning of climate actionand inaction, of state response; of music, movements and cantos, employingBlaser’s element of song across his examinations of the earth. “Without stopping/ one after the other / lit out / for all haste / you move / your image moves,”begins “CANTO 25,” “words remain human / like blood coagulates / and quickens /like a plant / or sea fungus forming / from the begetter’s heart [.]” There’s athickness to the collection, an intellectual and lyric heft, blended in such away to not allow either to get in the way of the other, but intermingle comfortably;akin to the work of Blaser, one might say, able to absorb and engage with elementsfrom his surroundings, his community, into something unique, lyric and purelyhis own. As he offers as part of his “NOTES” at the back of the collection:

To cite in poetry, I havebelieved, is to participate in the commons that poetry exhibits better than anyother genre: our literary resources are shared, a common treasury for all.Citation may also be a form of solidarity. But I am compelled to note my sourceshere because, as Fady Joudah has said, “There is a solidarity whose horizon isassimilation, and there is a solidarity whose horizon is liberation. The formeris hierarchical to those it is in solidarity with. The latter is in communitywith them. The former treats them as abstraction. The latter is citational. Itnames those it loves” (The New Inquiry). I would name what I love, andbe in community with the many writers whose work I gratefully take up here.