_The Primordial Density Perturbation_, by Stephen Collis, Tinfish Retro Chapbook #3

Stephen Collis, The Primordial Density Perturbation, Tinfish Retro Chapbook, June 2011. $3

This is a small book about catastrophe. Catastrophes in play are environmental, political, cultural. Vancouver poet, Stephen Collis, makes quick weaves of contemporary language—lexicons of fashion, violence, economics, media-speak, poetics, disaster. His word-sprint reveals the paradoxical richness and paucity of our lingo, rich in material, yet poverty-stricken as a solution-narrative to what ails us. A formidable poet-critic, Collis writes critical poetry about the contemporary world, pulling in with his seine everything from Tahrir Square to the Pacific plastic patch. It's quite a catch.

Stephen Collis is the author of Mine (2001), two parts of the ongoing Barricades Project—Anarchive (2005) and The Commons (2008)—and two books of criticism: Through Words of Others: Susan Howe and Anarcho-Scholasticism (2006) and Phyllis Webb and the Common Good (2007). His most recent book, On the Material (2010), won the 2011 Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize. A long-standing member of the Kootenay School of Writing, he teaches poetry, poetics and American literature at Simon Fraser University.

Tinfish Editor has blogged elsewhere on Stephen Collis's work.

[Excerpt]

It’s the events we lumpen

struggle agro-crop to

imagine the woops of

primordial density perturbation

or instant class consciousness

you know sea all swelly

of a sudden the perfect

heterotropic ship running

guns for governments or it’s

kefayas! all around Tahrir Square

up-thrust subduction no

two party system but

where did anything come from

and how like curtains

round a wizard ignore that man

tear it off this gauze from

eyes this false separation of

individuals we in this y’all

crap thrown fast from

unheard explosions