We are thrilled to announce our newest issue of Canadian Literature, issue 256! In this general issue’s editorial, Editor-in-Chief Christine Kim writes,
In a recent special issue of Canadian Literature on the theme of
poetics and extraction, editors Max Karpinski and Melanie Unrau
draw attention to “Canada as referring, always problematically, to the
land on and with which we live, the settler-colonial nation-state, and
an ideological cultural project” (5). Considering Canada as an ongoing
colonial and ideological environment, they ask: “[I]n what ways might
cultural production and scholarship in the field of ‘Canadian
literature’ address the unfolding, intensifying, and deeply entangled
environmental and social crises that mark the present moment?” (5). They approach environment through a focus on extractivism, which perceives “not only so-called inanimate resources such as furs and oil but also Indigenous, Black, and People of Colour as extractible” (7). To counter extractivism, which they deem tied to racial capitalism and colonialism, Karpinski and Unrau engage with the pieces in their special issue for how they “contribute to envisioning good, non-extractive ways of living and being in relation” (8). The five articles in this general issue take up the particularities of environment quite differently, addressing place in terms of labour newspaper circulation, rural homosocial community, labour protests, mediated nature, and transnational poetic networks. And yet, each article also engages with the question of what it means to “live and be in relation” in these particular environments.
This issue also features:
- Articles by Billy Johnson, Gemma Marr, Valerie Uher, Zane Koss, Joel Deshaye
- An Opinions & Notes piece by Sarah Dorward
- Poetry by Matthew Rooney, Stan Rogal, Renee Cronley, Harold Rhenisch & Penn Kemp, John Barton, Bryan Sentes, Cecily Ross, and Alastair Morrison
- Reviews by Carl Watts, Zachary Abram, Fabio Akcelrud Durão, Marta Dvořák, Andrea MacPherson, Olivia Pellegrino, Nola Peshkin, Taylor Marie Graham, Dorothy F. Lane, Gregory Betts, Kelly Baron, Melanie Power, Tim Conley, MLA Chernoff, Hilary Clark, Ruth Bradley-St-Cyr, Melanie Braith, Rachel Fernandes, John Charles Ryan, Sylvie Vranckx, Christina Turner, Lillian Liao (as well as a second review by Lillian Liao), and Emma Morgan-Thorp.
The new issue can be ordered through our online store at https://canlit.ca/support/purchase/single-issues. Happy reading!