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Roger Farr
Reads at Spartacus Books
Book Launch
Friday, April 103, 2007
Authors who read on this date:
Andrea Actis
Stephen Collis
Roger Farr
Programme
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Part
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Stephen Collis
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Introduction by Karl Seigler |
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Collis, whole reading |
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Andrea Actis
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Introduction by Stephen Collis |
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Actis, whole reading |
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Roger Farr
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Introduction by Stephen Collis |
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Farr, whole reading |
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Context |
A reading to celebrate the launch of Stephen Collis' book on Phyllis Webb, Phyllis Webb and the Common Good (Talonbooks 2007)
"For the reader, there are the poems - engaging practices in the public sphere. We can respond to Webb's responses - this is in fact our responsibility. She has always positioned herself on a cabin on a cold margin - peering into 'the common good.' She peers through painting now. The poetry remains our commons - 'Language is common,' writes Antonio Negri, and 'it is the immeasurable to-come that creates the common.' The multiple voices of Webb's poetry - the responses to other poems, the 'scattering chips of dialogue' in their anarchic multiplicity - gather into the thick listening of paint&where the poet, not joining the journey into history and the word, remains inside outside, in her cabin, on her island of the 'immeasurable to-come.'"
- from Phyllis Webb and the Common Good
And I the milk maid but
we made this immaculate if somewhat
farmed unholy. Bloodwork said
invent it, and butterflies, and blastocyst
and every myth landed
in the Point Grey petri dish
to chance and alter so.
It was fun when they aspirated
a baker's dozen out of me.
We celebrated the maybe of it
the maybe even of triplets
with some really very good sushi.
- Andrea Actis, from The Godmother
XIX
I'm sorry to make of poetry a mockery again
But this evening, as I exited Safeway, the historical process
Of separating the proletariat from the means of subsistence
Forced itself upon my eyes with such a violence
As to break the levees of false consciousness.
For it was there, among the Tylenol and the razor blades
Among a disturbing array of meat and dairy products
I spent $3.38 on mozzarella cheese, $1.04 on Macintosh
Apples, $2.29 on fresh basil, $1.10 on hot-house tomatoes
$1.95 on French-style Artisan bread, and $4.99 on a Green
Drink. Now I admit Im no campesino. But as the last
Long rays of a late September sun cast shadows over
The obsolete lawns of Oak Bay, I understood precisely
Our need for autonomous land initiatives.
- Roger Farr, from SURPLUS
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