Resisting Canada gathers together poets for a conversation bigger than
poetic trends. The book's organizing principle is Canada--the Canada
that established residential schools; the Canada grappling with the
Truth and Reconciliation Commission; the Canada that has been visible in
its welcome of Syrian refugees, yet the not-always-tolerant place where
the children of those refugees will grow up; the Canada eager to
re-establish its global leadership on the environment while struggling
to acknowledge Indigenous sovereignty on resource-rich land and enabling
further colonization of that land. In the face of global conflicts due
to climate change, scarcity, mass migrations, and the rise of xenophobic
populisms, Canada still works with a surface understanding of its
democratic values--both at their noblest and most deceptive.
The work included in Resisting Canada--by celebrated poets such as Lee
Maracle, Jordan Abel, Billy-Ray Belcourt, Louise Bernice Halfe, Michael
Prior, and Leanne Betasamosake Simpson--addresses, among other things,
Indigenous agency, cultural belonging, environmental anxieties, and
racial privilege. These poems ask us to judge and resist a statecraft
that refuses to acknowledge past and present wrongs
