OILYWOOD

Christine Leclerc

oilywood-cover

Christine Leclerc is one of the most impressive “committed” poets I know—able to at once convey news that stays news and locate where the heart blooms amidst tottering capitalist machinery. In Oilywood, Leclerc wades into the surf, practicing “another mode of grasping,” listening and recording while her feet go numb, the tankers lumber by, and her phone underwater takes picture after picture. Plans for ever more pipelines, mergers and corporate deals, financed by capital going all-in at the casino’s fossil fuel table, are made all the more pressing and tangible by Leclerc’s insistence on the local, her body in these fragile waters, and the interruptions of her non-compliant voice. — Stephen Collis

In Oilywood, corporate oil interests Kinder Morgan, El Paso, Eagle Ford and Peabody Energy become dramatis personae, villains in an all-too-real play on the world stage. These characters flaunt an ethic of ‘can implies ought’ with a dispassionate, journalistic reportage, but between their actions a lone voice bears witness to, reflects upon, and implores us to heed the wreckage caused in this epic theatre. This voice sings with vigilant clarity and resolute grace despite such overarching resistance to its song. Leclerc deserves bravos and encores.  — David Seymour

Publisher and Distributor: Nomados Editions

Winner of the 2014 bpNichol Chapbook Award, Quill & Quire

Oilywood film, Main Street Media

Audio Tour of Burrard Inlet

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