Fracking - tar-sand runoff - dirty oil extraction. This is the
language of our oil-addicted 21st century society: incredibly invasive,
blatant in its purpose, and richly embedded in mythological and
archetypal symbolism. The ultimate goal of the industry: To core the
underworld.
Endangered Hydrocarbons, Lesley Battler's first full-length collection
of poetry, shows that the language of hydrocarbon extraction, with its
blend of sexual imagery, archetype, science, pseudoscience and the
purely speculative, can be as addictive as the resource it pursues.
Using pastiche and wordplay, Battler shines a floodlight on the
absurdity and pervasiveness of production language in all areas of human
life in the oil fields, including art, culture and politics.
Incorporating texts generated by a multinational oil company, and
spliced with a variety of found material (video games, home decor
magazines, works by Henry James and Carl Jung), Battler deliberately
tampers with her found material, treating it as crude oil--excavating,
mixing, and drilling these texts to emulate extraction processes used by
the industry.With traces of Dennis Lee's Testament, Larissa Lai's
Automaton Biographies, and Adam Dickinson's The Polymers, this
lively and refreshing take on a polarizing topic will resonate with
readers of contemporary poetry who connect with environmental issues and
capitalist critique.
