The Polymers
CBC Books | | Posted: March 6, 2017 5:30 PM | Last Updated: December 18, 2018
Adam Dickinson
The Polymers is a bold new work from one of our most ambitious poetic minds. Structured as an imaginary science project, the varied pieces in this collection investigate the intersection of poetry and chemicals, specifically plastics, attempting to understand their essential role in culture. Through various procedures, constraints and formal mutations, the poems express the repeating structures fundamental to plastic molecules as they appear in cultural and linguistic behaviours such as arguments, anxieties and trends. (From House of Anansi)
From the book
We practiced our own substitutions,
acting out ghost stories, declaring allegiance
to phantom limbs
while playing high-kick soccer,
awarding exaggerated penalties
for handballs,
offenders chicken-winged
and forced to pirate copies
of hoof-and-mouth disease
for overseas quarantined manicurists.
From The Polymers by Adam Dickinson ©2013. Published by House of Anansi Press.