beholden: a poem as long as the river

Description

Stemming from a 114-foot-long installation, Beholden: A Poem As Long As the River by acclaimed poets Fred Wah and Rita Wong aim to synthesize the poets' experiences along the Columbia River with analyses of contemporary and historical research material, thereby contributing to a larger dialogue around the river through visual art, writing and public engagement.

Fred Wah was born in Swift Current, Saskatchewan, in 1939, and he grew up in the West Kootenay region of British Columbia. Studying at the University of British Columbia in the early 1960s, he was one of the founding editors of the poetry newsletter TISH. Of his seventeen books of poetry, is a door received the BC Book Prize for Poetry, Waiting For Saskatchewan received the Governor General's Award, and So Far was awarded the Stephanson Award for Poetry. Diamond Grill, a biofiction about hybridity and growing up in a small-town Chinese-Canadian cafe, won the Howard O'Hagan Award for Short Fiction, and his collection of critical writing, Faking It: Poetics and Hybridity, received the Gabrielle Roy Prize. Wah was appointed to the Order of Canada in 2012. He served as Canada's Parliamentary Poet Laureate from 2011 to 2013. Rita Wong was born in 1968 and grew up in Calgary. She has taught English in China, Japan, and Canada, and currently lives in Vancouver where she remains active as a writer, activist, and archivist. In 1997 she received the Asian Canadian Writers' Workshop emerging writer award. She is currently teaching at the Emily Carr University of Art + Design in Vancouver.

"A stunning book that reminds us the Columbia has a 'dignity that cannot be taken away, not by the buzz of wires, not by the hum of highway, not by induced amnesia, because water remembers.'" -Geoffrey Nilson, Coast Mountain Culture "The fun that these two fine writers had in engaging with the Columbia is evident in the wordplay of the poetry" -Frances Boyle, Canthius "We should [applaud] this productive, politically grounded, and aesthetically inventive work." -Stephen Hong Sohn, Asianamlitfans "Fred Wah and Rita Wong's beholden: a poem as long as the river (Talonbooks) will appeal to the art-obsessed or the environmentally engaged." -ReadLocalBC "The book is a homage to the Columbia, a reverent celebration of its life-giving water, its flora and fauna, and the Indigenous people who protected and protect the river." -The Ormsby Review