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Undercurrent by Rita Wong Kelly Shepherd UBC Okanagan The Goose Volume 15 | No. 1 Article 6 8-21-2016 undercurrent by Rita Wong Kelly Shepherd UBC Okanagan Part of the Critical and Cultural Studies Commons, Literature in English, North America Commons, Nature and Society Relations Commons, Place and Environment Commons, and the Race, Ethnicity and Post-Colonial Studies Commons Follow this and additional works at / Suivez-nous ainsi que d’autres travaux et œuvres: https://scholars.wlu.ca/thegoose Recommended Citation / Citation recommandée Shepherd, Kelly. "undercurrent by Rita Wong." The Goose, vol. 15 , no. 1 , article 6, 2016, https://scholars.wlu.ca/thegoose/vol15/iss1/6. This article is brought to you for free and open access by Scholars Commons @ Laurier. It has been accepted for inclusion in The Goose by an authorized editor of Scholars Commons @ Laurier. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Cet article vous est accessible gratuitement et en libre accès grâce à Scholars Commons @ Laurier. Le texte a été approuvé pour faire partie intégrante de la revue The Goose par un rédacteur autorisé de Scholars Commons @ Laurier. Pour de plus amples informations, contactez [email protected]. Shepherd: undercurrent by Rita Wong A Call for Action, a Prayer to Hold On The poems of undercurrent are not as stylized, or cryptic, as those of Sybil undercurrent by RITA WONG Unrest (co-written with Larissa Lai in 2008); Nightwood Editions, 2015 $18.95 this book has more in common with 2007’s forage. Both are collage-like, with Reviewed by KELLY SHEPHERD illustrations and marginalia, and both employ a number of poetic forms. Some So terribly simple, so utterly undercurrent poems, like “fresh ancient unachieved so far: ground” (17) and “dada-thay” (70), to kick the oil addiction for love of juxtapose brief stanzas with essay-like water prose; repetition and rhythm are emphasized in “immersed” (32) and “#J28” . (77). Found poems utilize lines from Alberta oil sands documents (“for gregoire lake” 68) to make a story large enough, and the online I Ching (“threefold return” generous enough to become 56). better neighbours As the variety of collaborators listed with the winged, the finned, the four in the above paragraphs attest, Wong is a legged, the stumbling two poet heavily invested in community. The leggeds Acknowledgements pages include many (“too long a sacrifice” II. lines 3-7) individual names, and an extensive list of conferences, walks, schools, and gatherings. With its oral storytelling rhythms, Quotations from a wide variety of literature and its balance of hope and despair, this and popular culture border the pages. The passage is representative of Vancouver poet book is written in English, but phrases and Rita Wong’s newest collection, names in Chinese and numerous Indigenous undercurrent. In fact, Wong published two languages float to the surface throughout. books in 2015: undercurrent and the This emphasis on dialogue and graphic novel perpetual. Both are illustrated interconnectedness—on kinship—extends by Cindy Mochizuki; both seek to beyond human cultures to include the communicate the vital importance of water natural world and, of course, water. In “too for the well-being of all biological, cultural, long a sacrifice” the coastal waters and their and spiritual life on planet Earth. inhabitants, including the participants in a undercurrent’s cover is a green swirl canoe journey, are a “murmuration of of submarine life and motion, depicting an ancestors and descendants” (II. line 23); undulating spiritual ecology of human, “#J28” describes round dancers and other-than-human, and mythical beings. drummers raising awareness for treaty According to the artist’s statement at the rights across the country as a “human river” back of the book, it is a detail of “Becoming (line 33). And these are not mere Worthy” by Marika Swan, part of a larger metaphors (pun intended). Human beings, collection of woodblock prints that explores like all living things, are composed of water the people’s “natural and supernatural and depend upon water to survive. The relationship with whales” in Swan’s health of water is our health. Solidarity with traditional Tla-o-qui-aht community. all that is alive, including water itself, is the Published by / Publié par Scholars Commons @ Laurier, 2016 1 The Goose, Vol. 15, No. 1 [2016], Art. 6 surface tension that holds these poems return of the salmon in “medicines in the together. city” (36) and the celebration of life’s simple But Wong is not content to simply pleasures in “inner compass, outer radar” point out the ecological connections (62). There is still fresh water flowing between water and life. She also condemns beneath the surface that can—and will— the rampant corporatization and rise up. consumerism that have landed us in this present era of ecocide and rising tides. another world is not only possible, Pollution and polluters are called out in the she is already here, carrying prose lines of “borrowed waters,” for on underneath our feet example, where “the great pacific garbage reconstituting us with each new sip patch is not just a mass of floating plastic of ancient water junk the size of ontario, jostling about with (“too long a sacrifice” II. lines 9-10) jellyfish and starving squids in the ocean, but a dead albatross mirrors us back to KELLY SHEPHERD’s poetry collection Shift ourselves” (lines 1-5). was published by Thistledown Press in The wonderfully titled “a magical spring 2016. Originally from Smithers, dictionary from bitumen to sunlight” British Columbia, he currently lives in defines the word “bitumen” as “buried Edmonton. ancestors, unearthed & burned to expand the ocean” (line 18). In “lupus, a doubled being” a prophetic voice speaks for the myriad forms of life with water’s voice: “We are freshwater & saltwater, blood & bone,” a voice which becomes apocalyptic when imagining its own resilience in the face of destructive industrial capitalism: “We are wet premonition, ferocious spirit waiting for the master’s dams to crack, the inexorable and unrepentant rain, the tidal waves taller than tankers” (lines 41 and 33-34). If water’s health is also our health, then violence perpetrated against water is violence perpetrated against us. Among other things, the title undercurrent suggests resistance. Indeed, despite all the oil and plastic and uranium, there is room for hope in these pages: “we persevere / through this episode called industrialization” (“the wonders of being several” lines 3-4). undercurrent is an ecology of joy and sadness, a complex watershed of anger and beauty. There are bright moments, like the https://scholars.wlu.ca/thegoose/vol15/iss1/6 2.
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