October 2006
Monthly Archive
poetry
Posted by squirrley on 31 Oct 2006 | Tagged as: home
Things I am considering for my ‘project’ of a long poem or series for my poetry class:
Poems to various Yukon party members of the last sitting of the legislature, especially the ones plagued by criminal wrong doing or those defaulting on their large government loans.
One poem a day sitting on my porch looking at the same landscape.
A series of poems ‘in the body’ doing sports or physical activity. Some could be things I actually do regularly now (soccer, yoga, running); and some could be outdoor sports like kayaking or backcountry skiing.
“Reflections”: this would be a series of meditations on reflections–literal reflections like the moon in water or fluorescent lights and a roomscape in a pane of glass– in nature and in the built environment. Because reflections also refract and change in different mediums, I could ‘translate’ my own reflections on reflections by writing some of the poems in french.
I have this memory of Jim Kenyon, the Yukon’s Minister of Economic Development, addressing the opening evening of a conference on ABS (“Access to Genetic Resources and Benefit-sharing”, or what the cynical might call establishing a legal framework to meet the bare minimum protocols for recognizing indigenous rights, so that Western companies can bioprospect the ‘genetic resources’ of indigenous plants and indigenous people, including plants with traditional uses, and dna of aboriginal people and human remains), with a long exposition on how genetic engineering was fine, nothing to be afraid of, no more dangerous than a mosquito bite, in fact just like a mosquito bite because when mosquitos bite they inject their DNA into their host. “And I’m a veternarian! I know.” he said. I couldn’t believe he was saying this to a roomful of elders, first nations representatives, and government people. “Are you for real?” I thought. Is this your grasp of molecular genetics? Is this really your framework for viewing the complex question of who has rights to bodies of knowledge and what permission has to be obtained, and the relationship between the ’snip and tuck’ of bits of plant or people dna and the need to respect and care for the source? Like a mosquito bite?
But of course he was for real–still is, in fact.
This absolutely totally out there quality to Yukon political life does prompt one to poetry. It’s phenomenal that the number of convicted criminals sitting in the last session of the legislature far exceeded the prevalence of such folks in the general population–although to be fair Haakon Arntzen, under tremendous pressure for continuing to sit as an MLA throughout his trial, resigned his seat after being convicted on three counts of indecent assault for sexual offences against girls. (A new trial has been ordered; in the meantime, NWT has ordered Arntzen to stand trial on other charges related to girls in another small settlement)
Anyways–I will post this quarter finished post as so many others have fallen unfinished by the wayside!