POETRY IN PANDEMIC TIMES: MOURNING COLLECTIVE VULNERABILITY IN SUE GOYETTE’S SOLSTICE 2020. AN ARCHIVE
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.12795/REN.2022.i26.15Keywords:
Sue Goyette; COVID-19 pandemic; more-than-human world; trans-corporeality; vulnerability; mourning; resilienceAbstract
Focusing on Canadian poet Sue Goyette’s collection Solstice 2020. An Archive (2021), this article examines how dealing with the effects of a global pandemic through the medium of poetry can act as a powerful catalyst in raising awareness about collective vulnerability and mourning. During the locked-down days of 2020, Goyette felt it was her responsibility as a poet to find words to convey the sense of shared vulnerability people experienced in the face of a momentous event that confined them to their homes for days on end. Drawing on vulnerability theory, ecophilosopher David Abram’s thinking on the more-than-human world, Stacy Alaimo’s concept of trans-corporeality, as well as on recent theorizations on the COVID-19 pandemic, this article argues that Goyette’s Solstice 2020 is a most interesting sociological document that represents collective vulnerability, testifies to the conundrums posed by the still ongoing pandemic, and makes visible the deep affinities between humankind and the more-than-human world.
Downloads
Metrics
References
ABRAM, David. The Spell of the Sensuous. Perception and Language in a More- Than- Human World. Pantheon Books, 1996.
ABRAM, David. Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2010.
ABRAM, David. “Afterword: The Commonwealth of Breath.” Material Ecocriticism, edited by Serenella Iovino and Serpil Oppermann, Indiana UP, 2014, pp. 301-314.
ALAIMO, Stacy. Bodily Natures: Science, Environment, and the Material Self. Indiana UP, 2010.
ALAIMO, Stacy. “New Materialisms, Old Humanisms, or, Following the Submersible.” NORA – Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research, 19(4), 2011, pp. 280-284.
ANONYMOUS. “Sue Goyette.” Poetry in Voice. https://www.poetryinvoice.com/poems/poets/sue-goyette Accessed July 10, 2022.
ANONYMOUS. “The ‘Ice Flowers’ of Snowflake Bentley.” The Attic, 2019. https://www.theattic.space/home-page-blogs/2019/1/4/the-ice-flowers-of-snowflake-bentley Accessed July 10, 2022.
ARISTOTLE. The Complete Works of Aristotle. The Revised Oxford Translation. Vol. 2. Ed. Jonathan Barnes. Princeton UP, 1984.
BAPUJI, Hari, et al. “Business and Society Research in Times of the Corona Crisis.” Business & Society, 59(6), 2020, pp. 1067-1078.
BARAD, Karen. Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning. Duke UP, 2007.
BBC News. “Historic Bentley Snowflake Photos for Sale in US.” January 21, 2010. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8473771.stm Accessed July 10, 2022.
BRINGHURST, Robert. “The Mind of the Wild.” Learning to Die: Wisdom in the Age of Climate Crisis, Robert Bringhurst and Jan Zwicky, U of Regina P, 2018, pp. 7-39.
CALDWELL, Claire. “Field Notes for the Alpine Tundra by Elena Johnson.” The Goose, vol. 14, no. 2, 2016, article 15.
CAREY, Barb. “Wrapping up National Poetry Month, new volumes show the power of words to be ‘wildly inventive’ and offer us ‘luminous delight’.” Toronto Star, April 22, 2021. https://www.flamboroughreview.com/whatson-story/10378546-wrapping-up-national-poetry-month-new-volumes-show-the-power-of-words-to-be-wildly-inventive-and-offer-us-luminous-delight-/ Accessed July 10, 2022.
DUNCAN, Rebecca, and Johan Höglund. “Decolonising the COVID-19 Pandemic.” Approaching Religion, 11(2), 2021, pp. 115-131.
FERNANDO, Jude L. “From the Virocene to the Lovecene Epoch: Multispecies Justice as Critical Praxis for Virocene Disruptions and Vulnerabilities.” Journal of Political Ecology, 27(1), 2020, pp. 685-731.
GOYETTE, Sue. The True Names of Birds. Brick Books, 1998.
GOYETTE, Sue. Lures. Harper Flamingo, 2002.
GOYETTE, Sue. Undone. Brick Books, 2004.
GOYETTE, Sue. Outskirts. Brick Books, 2011.
GOYETTE, Sue. Ocean. Gaspereau Press, 2013.
GOYETTE, Sue. The Brief Reincarnation of a Girl. Gaspereau Press, 2015.
GOYETTE, Sue. Penelope. Gaspereau Press, 2017.
GOYETTE, Sue. Anthesis: A Memoir. Gaspereau Press, 2020.
GOYETTE, Sue. Solstice 2020. An Archive. Gaspereau Press, 2021.
GREEN, Hannah. “An Interview with Sue Goyette.” Contemporary Verse 2, Summer 2016. https://contemporaryverse2.ca/interviews/an-interview-with-sue-goyette/ Accessed July 10, 2022.
HAMILTON, Sylvia. “Sylvia Hamilton Reviews a Welcome Undercurrent of Hope from Sue Goyette.” Atlantic Books, October 27, 2021. https://atlanticbooks.ca/stories/sylvia-hamilton-reviews-a-welcome-undercurrent-of-hope-from-sue-goyette/ Accessed July 10, 2022.
HEIDEGGER, Martin. “Letter on Humanism.” Basic Writings, edited by David Farrell Krell, Harper and Row, 1977, pp. 189-242.
JESSOP, Paula. “Sue Goyette.” The Canadian Encyclopaedia. July 29, 2014. www.thecanadianencylopedia.ca/en/article/sue-goyette Accessed July 10, 2022.
KERRICULL. “Understanding Water: An Interview with Sue Goyette.” July 7, 2013. https://kerricull.wordpress.com/2013/07/07/understanding-water-an-interview-with-sue-goyette/ Accessed July 10, 2022.
LEAR, Jonathan. Radical Hope: Ethics in the Face of Cultural Devastation. Harvard UP, 2008.
MACASKILL, Annick. “Of Re-writing, Reclamation, and Unredacting: An Interview with Sue Goyette.” Puritan Magazine, May 2020. http://puritan-magazine.com/of-re-writing-reclamation-and-unredacting-an-interview-with-sue-goyette/ Accessed July 10, 2022.
MEDLEY, Mark. “The Griffin Prize Q&A: Sue Goyette.” The National Post, June 2, 2014. https://nationalpost.com/entertainment/books/the-griffin-prize-qa-sue-goyette/wcm/6aa87768-6b42-4446-acd6-fc4ad004d474/amp/ Accessed July 10, 2022.
MOORE, Jason W. “The Capitalocene and Planetary Justice.” Maize, 6, 2019, pp. 49-54.
MULLIN, Morgan. “Six Questions with Sue Goyette, Halifax’s New Poet Laureate.” The Coast, April 28, 2020a. https://www.thecoast.ca/halifax/six-questions-with-sue-goyette-halifaxs-new-poet-laureate/Content?oid=23968073 Accessed July 10, 2022.
MULLIN, Morgan. “Light a Candle; Carry a Torch to the Shortest Day”. The Coast, December 1, 2020b. https://www.thecoast.ca/halifax/light-a-candle-carry-a-torch-to-the-shortest-day/Content?oid=25311788 Accessed July 10, 2022.
SASSEN, Saskia. Expulsions. Brutality and Complexity in the Global Economy. Belknap Press of Harvard UP, 2014.
STRAND, Mark. “Notes on the Craft of Poetry.” The Weather of Words: Poetic Invention, Alfred A. Knopf, 2000, pp. 67-74.
THOREAU, Henry David. The Journal of Henry D. Thoreau. Ed. Bradford Torrey. Houghton Mifflin and Company, 1906.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
Accepted 2022-12-19
Published 2022-12-29
- Abstract 195
- pdf 70
