In To the Barricades we move back and forth between historical and contemporary scenes of revolt, from nineteenth-century Parisian street barricades to twenty-first-century occupations and street marches, shifting along the active seam between poetry and revolution. At once elegy (poems dedicated “to” past revolutionary figures and scenes) and a call for renewed struggle in the here and now, this collection of “social lyrics” and serial explosions seeks to drive apathy from the field and to recover forgotten “radical ideas” amidst our current “amnesiac condition.” Avant-garde technique is donated to lyric ends (the expression of social affects), as Arthur Rimbaud presides and the commune is reconvened in Vancouver’s streets.
To the Barricades continues Collis’s “life” poem, “The Barricades Project,” which also includes Anarchive (2005) and The Commons (2008). Both the anti-archive of the revolutionary record and the dream of a once and future “commons” upon which all can equally dwell continue to shape these poems where words are hurried bricks thrown up as “barricades” in language.
“Dear effects of / tireless treason / the social only / shuffles if you / move your feet / we’ve learned this / in a place invaders / called Vancouver / even if we are only / a few and even if / it rains on the day / of the demo”
Stephen Collis is the author of six books of poetry, including the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize–winning On the Material (Talonbooks, 2010). His memoir, Almost Islands: Phyllis Webb and the Pursuit of the Unwritten, was published by Talonbooks in 2018. He teaches contemporary poetry and poetics at Simon Fraser University. Collis was the 2019 recipient of the Latner Writers’ Trust Poetry Prize, which is given to a mid-career poet in recognition of a remarkable body of work, and in anticipation of future contributions to Canadian poetry.
… from Collis’s most recent collection of poetry, To the Barricades (2013), beautifully typeset in the style of the …
…from his poetry collections The Red Album and To The Barricades . The CUPE tent. Note: bookish Vancouverites are … Emotions and Otters. Stephen Collis reads from To the Barricades. While Dina Del Bucchia, Stephen Collis, and …
…Stephen Collis reads from To the Barricades , which launched in Vancouver in April. The full …
…his upcoming poetry title and works, including To The Barricades . Click here to listen to the entire broadcast. …
…The Monument Cycles by Mariner Janes, To the Barricades by Stephen Collis, and Liquidities: Vancouver …
…list are now available, Stephen Collis’ To the Barricades and Daphne Marlatt’s Liquidities: Vancouver … outraged calls for change from our local streets. To the Barricades continues Collis’s “life” poem, “The Barricades …