news | Tuesday June 16, 2015

Stephen Collis, a Commoner Across the Pond

Poet and activist Stephen Collis is presently in England touring the second edition of his collection of poetry, The Commons. He reads and speaks at events on June 18, 20, and 23, 2015. Find information about each of the events here.

Underground in poetry since the nineteenth century, the fight against enclosure resurfaces today amidst continuing accumulation and a renascent sense of the commons under globalization. In The Commons we wander the English countryside with the so-called mad peasant poet John Clare, pick wild fruit with Henry David Thoreau, and comb the Lake District with a host of authors of Romantic guides and tours, undermining William Wordsworth’s proprietary claim to the region. Somewhere along the way Robert Frost’s wall falls down, the Zapatistas make their appearance, and Gerrard Winstanley reclaims the earth as a “Common Treasury.” This second edition includes the essay “Of Blackberries and the Poetic Commons.”