Say the Names: The Enpipe Line

Say the Names...

Al Purdy wrote a wonderful poem called "Say the names say the names" which celebrates the names of Canadian rivers - Tulameen, Kleena Kleene, Similkameen, Nahanni, Kluane and on and on in a celebratory song.

Enbridge is planning to build a dual pipeline that will carry bitumen and condensate across hundreds of waterways between Edmonton and Kitimat. Some of these waterways are rivers like the Parsnip (or what's left of it), the Nechako, the Morice and others are smaller creeks whose names are often known only to the folks who live along their banks or who fish in their shadows or who bend to wash or drink as they cross paths.

I want to collect the names of these rivers and creeks, to collect your stories, your poems, your songs so we can collectively give voice to the land living under the line Enbridge plans to draw.

People have also sent me copies of their presentations to the community oral presentations. If you'd like to add your voice, email me (sheila.peters900@gmail.com) your stories and I'll post them for you. The copyright remains with you.

All the best.
Sheila Peters

Monday, April 2, 2012

Enpipe Line and Fish Hats

I re-worked and read some of my blog postings at the Prince George launch of The Enpipe Line: 70,000+ km of poetry written in resistance to the Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipelines proposal a week ago today. Contributors to the collection (Rob Budde, Al Rempel, Charlene Wattson, and Weston McGee) read as did PG poets Sarah de Leeuw and Gillian Wigmore. To see the action, you can go to Prince George launch.

We read in ArtSpace, a wonderful venue made available by Books & Company; right next door is a yarn shop called Top Drawer. If you're a knitter, the lure of the bright colours is pretty much irresistible. I talked to Amanda and Darlene there and proposed a knitting project/fundraisers for those resisting the Northern Gateway project. It's called Fish Hat (Dead or Alive?) and is fun to knit and a great way to use up odds and ends of yarn. The hats can be sold as fundraisers or worn when making your oral presentation to the Joint Review Panel (if they're not too afraid to come to your town). I've signed up to make my presentation April 23 in Smithers...first day. Now it's time to prepare it and start knitting my fish hat. If you want more details, let me know.

Tuesday, January 3, 2012

Other ways of speaking

The past few months have slipped by in a daze of writing and editing and reading (as well as lovely holiday visiting and winter snowshoe trips). As Monsieur Harper's environment and energy ministers try to tell us that increasing our carbon contributions to climate change by exporting jobs through a pipeline is somehow in the national interest, Petrochina (remember PetroCanada?) has just reeled in 100% ownership of a tar sands project, adding to its already substantial holdings in northern Alberta. Perhaps China will invest in Canadian refineries...which makes it in our national interest to block any projects that might facilitate the crude's export.

See what happens to words when you string them together to try to make sense of the world? It was something much more vital (in the true sense of the word) that brought me back here to re-engage. An old friend, Bill Metcalfe, who used to live on the banks of the Bulkley River and near Driftwood Creek (downstream of one of the proposed pipeline crossings) told his Facebook friends about Say the Names. (Thanks Bill.) Bill's son was born within a km of the river and we've taken all three of his children down to fish and swim in a welcoming eddy further down river, a beautiful place where Twobridge (or Reiseter) Creek flows into the Bulkley and eddies back upstream to form a safe, warm pool behind a large rock outcrop.

We've taken our own boys there many times, and as they grew, they've taken friends and special girls down the same trail to listen to the sounds of water and stone speaking to each other. I'm hoping this summer, we just might be able to take our first grandchild to that same spot and introduce him or her to the water.

But before then, we'll be making our presentations to the joint review panel as wends its unriverlike way across the north. And Creekstone Press will have published a print version of The Enpipe Line: 70,000+ km of collaborative poetry written in resistance to Enbridge's proposed Northern Gateway Pipelines. Click here.

Here's my contribution.

Some Rivers (291.6 km of poetry in a font one km tall)

What is this obsession with carving
courses? Scouring and scraping, cliffs collapsing
and bridges washed out? All these crashing chords
and tragic denouements sinking into stinking tidal flats.
Something in the key of huge.
A quiet seepage—
too quiet, really, to be called a spring—
can unlock the earth’s heat.
The ice exhales and opens
a pool for this dipper
bobbing on a rock.
It dives in and finds a current
that’s warmer than the winter air.
                    There’s spirit in there somewhere,
                    and bouncing back, the bird
                    it dipsy doodles
                    on the slippery dance floor
                    tapping out some bebop riff
                    we all wish that we could follow.
                    Something in the key of home.

If you've never seen a dipper, watch An American Dipper in Paris.

Please keep sending creektalk and river song.