declaration of intent
let the colonial borders be seen for the inaccurate fabrications that they arei hereby honour what the flow of water teaches ushydrology is a sacred bond, embedded in our plump, moist cells,in our breaths that transpire to return to the clouds that gave us life through rainin the rivers and aquifers that we and our neighbours drink fromin the oceans that our foremothers came froma watershed teaches not only humbleness but climate literacythe languages we need to interpret the sea’s rising voiceits currents bearing the plastic from our fridges and closetsa gyre of karma recirculates in the form of body burdeni hereby invoke watershed wisdom to guide us through the toxic mucki will apprentice myself to creeks and tributaries, groundwater and glacierslisten for the salty pulse within, the blood that recognizes marine ancestryin its chemical composition and intuitive pulli will learn through immersion, flotation, and transformationas water expands and contracts, i will fit myself to its ever-changing dimensionsmolecular and spectacular, water will return what we give it, be thatarrogance and poison, reverence and light, ambivalence and respectlet our societies be revived as watersheds
Feature Date
- March 28, 2022
Series
- What Sparks Poetry
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“Declaration of Intent” from UNDERCURRENT by Rita Wong.
Published by Nightwood Editions on April 18, 2015.
Copyright © 2015 by Rita Wong.
All rights reserved.
Reproduced by Poetry Daily with permission.
Rita Wong is a poet-scholar who attends to the relationships between water justice, ecology, and decolonization. She has co-edited an anthology with Dorothy Christian entitled Downstream: Reimagining Water, based on a gathering that brought together elders, artists, scientists, writers, scholars, students and activists around the urgent need to care for the waters that give us life. A recipient of the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize and the Asian Canadian Writers’ Workshop Emerging Writer Award, Wong is the author of current, climate (Wilfrid Laurier UP 2021), beholden (Talonbooks, 2018, with Fred Wah), undercurrent (Nightwood, 2015), perpetual (Nightwood, 2015, with Cindy Mochizuki), sybil unrest (Line Books, 2008, with Larissa Lai), forage (Nightwood, short-listed for the 2008 Asian American Literary Award for Poetry, winner of Canada Reads Poetry 2011), and monkeypuzzle (Press Gang, 1998). An Associate Professor in Critical and Cultural Studies at Emily Carr University of Art and Design, Wong has also served her faculty association as a steward and president.
Gibsons, British Columbia
Canada
The water belongs to itself. undercurrent reflects on the power and sacredness of water—largely underappreciated by too many—whether it be in the form of ocean currents, the headwaters of the Fraser River or fluids in the womb. Exploring a variety of poetic forms, anecdote, allusion and visual elements, this collection reminds humanity that we are water bodies, and we need and deserve better ways of honouring this.
Poet Rita Wong approaches water through personal, cultural and political lenses. She humbles herself to water both physically and spiritually: "i will apprentice myself to creeks & tributaries, groundwater & glaciers / listen for the salty pulse within, the blood that recognizes marine ancestry." She witnesses the contamination of First Nations homelands and sites, such as Gregoire Lake near Fort McMurray, AB: "though you look placid, peaceful dibenzothiophenes / you hold bitter, bitumized depths." Wong points out that though capitalism and industry are supposed to improve our quality of life, they're destroying the very things that give us life in the first place. Listening to and learning from water is key to a future of peace and creative potential.
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