Ripping down half the trees
A poetic confrontation with the structures of oppression in Ontario's remote northwest.
Description
Some poems can live without souls / but mine remain ghastly fools flicking / uncomfortable narratives like / cigarette butts during class change.
One out of every twenty students in the adult education classes Evan J teaches in Sioux Lookout, Ontario, dies every year; the surviving students are often afflicted by severe racism, poverty, addictions, and violence. Ripping down half the trees engages with these struggles, offering a catalogue of experiences specific to the remote regions of Canada.
Tearing down the façade of Canadian justice and equality to expose the racism, colonialism, sexism, prejudicial capitalism, and ableism at the nation's core, these are poems about cruelty, both the obvious and the ambient. They are unflinching in their sociopolitical criticism, upset by unchanging systemic oppressions, unable to overlook the threat of the author's white skin, unwilling to forget Justin Trudeau in blackface. And while they acknowledge the limits of the author's privileged perspective, they are never willing to let the perpetrating structures of this cruelty go unchecked.
But these poems also let stand the shelterwood, the upstanding actions of individuals, the totems of hope. They work as coping strategies, as therapy, as empathy, offering a glimpse of optimism and a space for discourse. These are poems that listen.
Reviews
"To read Ripping down half the trees is to experience a jarring feeling of contradiction and a provocation to contemplate how apathy plays a part in our lives. Evan J's words are arresting and urgent and woven with visceral images, linguistic precision, and sharp emotive undertones that cut to the bare bones of human experience. This is not an easy read. Evan skilfully guides the reader through that which is fraught – the violence of modern living. But more than that, it is written with an eye for beauty and a deep care for people and place." Lishai Peel, co-author of Why Birds and Wolves Don't Trade Stones
"In Ripping down half the trees readers are guided by a multitude of speakers who will bring them to sometimes dark and uncomfortable spaces where 'the lights are always off.' Exploring a range of themes, from the social and racial inequalities found within Canada to how to pluck pheasant and how to respond to hostility, Evan J artfully confronts and questions his privilege, thereby causing the speaker's eyes to adjust so that we may do the same. Ripping down half the trees is poignant and stark, yet filled with 'unfathomable beauty.'" Greg Santos, author of Ghost Face