Comprised of two lines of poetic text flowing along a 114-foot-long map
of the Columbia River, this powerful image-poem by acclaimed poets Fred
Wah and Rita Wong presents language yearning to understand the
consequences of our hydroelectric manipulation of one of North America's
largest river systems.
beholden: a poem as long as the river stems from the interdisciplinary
artistic research project "River Relations: A Beholder's Share of the
Columbia River," undertaken as a response to the damming and development
of the Columbia River in British Columbia, Washington, and Oregon, as
well as to the upcoming renegotiation of the Columbia River Treaty.
Authors Fred Wah and Rita Wong spent time exploring various stretches of
the river, all the way to its mouth near Astoria, Oregon. They then
spent several months creating long poems along the Columbia, each
searching for a language that evoked the complexities of our colonial
appropriation of it. beholden was then assembled as a page-turning
book that reproduces the two long poems as they respond to the
meanderings of the river flowing two thousand kilometres through Canada,
the United States, and the territories and reserves of Indigenous
Peoples. Visual artist Nick Conbere then transferred this winding
footprint into a monumental, 114-foot horizontal banner.
beholden: a poem as long as the river "reads" the geographic,
historical, political, and social dimensions of the Columbia River,
literally and figuratively, proposing two contrasting kinds of
attention. As both a stand-alone poem and an accompanying piece to the
visual installation exhibited at various galleries, beholden
represents a vital contribution to a larger dialogue around the river
through visual art, writing, and public engagement.
