The Petrochemical Ball

Chapters in this book

1. Frontmatter i
2. Contents v
3. Figures vii
4. Acknowledgments ix
5. Timeline of Oil-Worker Poetry in Canada xiii
6. First Day
7. Introduction 3
8. The Athabaska Trail
9. CHAPTER 1 Father of the Tar Sands: Modernity and Wilderness in S.C. Ells’s Northland Trails 21
10. The Driller Makes a Mistake 43
11. CHAPTER 2 “They make me / rough”: Speaking Oil Patch in Peter Christensen’s Rig Talk 45
12. Interest-Based Negotiation 61
13. CHAPTER 3 “my love is not dead yet”: Living/Loving Oil and the Land in Dymphny Dronyk’s Contrary Infatuations 63
14. Washout 80
15. CHAPTER 4 Tending Rusted Steel and Leased Land in Mathew Henderson’s The Lease 82
16. Blue Collar Mayhem 93
17. CHAPTER 5 Mud Man: Poetry as Truth-Telling and Land Relations in Naden Parkin’s A Relationship with Truth 94
18. The Petrochemical Ball 106
19. CHAPTER 6 “do not / be naïve”: Language and the Stakes of Animacy in Lesley Battler’s Endangered Hydrocarbons 110
20. Safety Reminder 126
21. CHAPTER 7 Boom Time, Giant Time, and Other Elsewhens of Lindsay Bird’s Boom Time 127
22. Birds Migrate at Night, Mostly Unseen 143
23. CONCLUSION Feeling Rough: Oil-Worker Poetry, Energy Justice, and the Cultural Politics of Emotion 144
24. Notes 159
25. Bibliography 195
26. Index 213