The Climate Imaginary: Beneath the Poetry, the Barricade — with Stephen Collis

This episode of Below the Radar is a special live recording from SFU School for the Contemporary Art’s Re-orientation day 2022: Contemporary Arts + Climate Change on September 8th, 2022. It’s also the first episode of our new series: The Climate Imaginary.

Stephen Collis is an award winning writer and a professor in the English department at SFU. Stephen joins our host Am Johal for a discussion on the relationship between art and environmental activism; They look at what art and writing can offer, but also the moments when you need to put down the pen and engage and take action in other ways. They also cover some of the collaborative artistic projects that Stephen is involved in such as the Refugee Tales Project, and additionally Stephen reads a few of his poems throughout the episode!

Full episode details: https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/series/the-climate-imaginary/192-stephen-collis.html.

Read the transcript: https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/transcripts/192-stephen-collis.html

Resources:
Stephen Collis: https://www.sfu.ca/people/scollis/

Once in Blockadia: https://talonbooks.com/books/once-in-blockadia

A History of the Theories of Rain: https://talonbooks.com/books/a-history-of-the-theories-of-rain

The Commons: https://talonbooks.com/books/the-commons

The Uprising: On Poetry and Finance by Bifo Berardi: https://mitpress.mit.edu/9781584351122/the-uprising/

How to Do Things With Words by JL Austin: https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674411524

The Mining Justice Alliance: https://miningjusticealliance.wordpress.com/

Refugee Tales: https://www.refugeetales.org/

Bio:
Stephen Collis is the author of a dozen books of poetry and prose, including The Commons (2008), the BC Book Prize winning On the Material (2010), Once in Blockadia (2016), Almost Islands: Phyllis Webb and the Pursuit of the Unwritten (2018), and A History of the Theories of Rain (2021)—all published by Talonbooks. In 2015 he was awarded the Nora and Ted Sterling Prize in Support of Controversy, after he was sued by oil company Kinder Morgan, whose lawyers entered Collis’s poetry as evidence in court. In 2019 he was the recipient of the Latner Writers’ Trust of Canada Poetry Prize in recognition of his body of work.

Cite this episode:
Chicago Style

Johal, Am. “The Climate Imaginary: Beneath the Poetry, the Barricade — with Stephen Collis.” Below the Radar, SFU’s Vancity Office of Community Engagement. Podcast audio, November 1, 2022. https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/series/the-climate-imaginary/192-stephen-collis.html.