Poetry Against the Pipeline

EARTH: We need to talk.

IRRESPONSIBLE EXTRACTION: Would love to, babe (checks time), but I have a meeting.

EARTH: Not again.

IRRESPONSIBLE EXTRACTION: It’s what I do.

EARTH: Enough it enough! I can’t put this off for another minute (removes coat).

IRRESPONSIBLE EXTRACTION: (makes point of not looking at Earth’s gashes.) I know what you’re going to say. (mockingly) Take, take, take, that’s all you ever do. But look, I can’t have this conversation right now. I’m already late for a meeting—

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This excerpt of Irresponsible Extraction, We’re Through With You (1,366.08 km), by the Ad Hoc Theatre Company, appears in “The Enpipe Line, 70,000+ kilometers of poetry written in resistance to the Enbridge Northern Pipeline Gateway Proposal” (thanks to Dorothee Lang, who edits the BluePrint Review, and also has a fine piece in the poetry-pipeline, for bringing this to my attention).

You’ve heard about the now shelved Keystone pipeline. The Northern Gateway Pipeline is its evil twin brother.

Here’s direct from the enpipeline.org blurb (http://enpipeline.org/):

The Enpipe Line goes dream vs. dream with Enbridge's proposed Northern Gateway Pipelines. If built, these 1,170 kilometre pipelines will carry tar sands oil and its poisonous by-products across more than 700 streams and rivers between Alberta and the B.C. port of Kitimat. In Kitimat, crude oil would be pumped into supertankers for export, threatening the fragile coastal ecosystem with a major spill. Originally conceived as a 1,170 kilometre-long collaborative line of poetry to match the length of the proposed pipelines, The Enpipe Line has grown to over 70,000 kilometres. Its community of poets comes from all ages and walks of life: woodworkers, painters, environmental campaigners, single parents, professors, children. This book, like the pipeline it opposes, outlines a dream. But, unlike Enbridge's proposal, The Enpipe Line represents the shared desire of living community: that the Northern Gateway Pipelines proposal never see the light of day.

Download a free copy until March 22. The volume goes live (in paper) from Creekstone Press on March 23. Kudos to them. See also my post about Wade Davis and the Sacred Headwaters. Vive la Résistance! 

You can see how EARTH stands up to IRRESPONSIBLE EXTRACTION on page 83. 

You can also see that environmental action takes many forms, including writing a poem. We at Eco-Fest are pleased to announce that one of the main features of our week, April 15-22, comes on April 16th, when we present Eco-Slam, a night of environmental poetry. Stay tuned for details.