Mobile

By Tanis MacDonald

Longlisted for the 2020 Toronto Book Awards

Mobile is an uncivil feminist reboot of Dennis Lee's Civil Elegies and Other Poems; an urban lament about female citizenship and settler culpability; an homage to working and walking women in a love/hate relationship with Toronto, its rivers and creeks, its sidewalks and parks, its history, misogyny and violence. How do we, in Lee's words, see the "lives we had not lived" that "invisibly stain" the city? What are the sexual politics of occupying space in a city, in a workspace, in history? How can we name our vulnerabilities and our disasters and still find strength?

Written in a slippery mix of lyric and experimental styles, Mobile is MacDonald's grouchiest book yet.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bookhug Press
• Release date: Sep 12, 2019
• ISBN: 9781771665315

Book preview

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first edition

Copyright © 2019 by Tanis MacDonald

all rights reserved

No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form

or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

The production of this book was made possible through the generous assistance of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council. Book*hug Press also acknowledges the support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Book Publishing Tax Credit and the Ontario Book Fund.

Book*hug Press acknowledges the land on which it operates. For thousands of years it has been the traditional land of the Huron-Wendat, the Seneca, and most recently, the Mississaugas of the Credit River. Today, this meeting place is still the home to many Indigenous people from across Turtle Island, and we are grateful to have the opportunity to work on this land.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Title: Mobile / Tanis MacDonald.

Names: MacDonald, Tanis, author.

Description: Poems.

Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20190157712 | Canadiana (ebook) 20190163046 isbn 9781771665308 (softcover) | isbn 9781771665315 (html) isbn 9781771665322 (pdf) | isbn 9781771665339 (Kindle)

Classification: lcc ps8575.d6657 m63 2019 | ddc c811/.54—dc23

For my mother, who never learned to drive

(miss you like crazy)

Contents

Copyright

Dedication

Flâneuserie

1. Sybil Elegies

Elegy 1

Elegy 2

Elegy 3

Elegy 4

Elegy 5

Elegy 6

2: Jane Walks

Jane Meets W. B. Yeats

Lucky Jane, Leaky Object

Jane Explains the Expanding Universe

Jane in Taddle Creek Park

Jane, City Cosmonaut: a rogue cento

Jane, Rover

Jane’s Nightingale

Jane’s Citifesto

At the Yeats Exhibit in the National Library in Dublin

The Birth of Jane in CanLit

Jane’s Weather Forecast

Jane’s House

How Jane Met Fern

Cross-stitch Sampler for the House of Refute

Pirate Jane and the Don River

Emma Goldman Meets Jane

Jane and the Monsters for Beauty, Permanence, and Individuality

Jane, Truth, and Reconciliation

Jane, Counting Down

Fern’s Pronunciation Guide

Jane in the Chthulucene

Fern and Jane Discuss the Queen

Jane’s Call to Action on the Humber Bay Bridge

Jane Talks with the Bishop of Rome about Recommendation 58

Fern on Cruelty

Jane and the Dancers in St. Alban’s Square

Jane to the Infinite Power

Jane’s Gathering

Jane at the Barricades

The Rapture of Clever Jane

Jane’s Dance

Fern’s Friday

Jane, Gathered

A Word about Jane from the Furies

Tremble: a leaving cento

Words about Jane from Those Who Knew Her

3. Bluestockings and Other Disasters

The Bluestocking’s Opening Lecture

The Cyborg’s Diary

No Exit

Bluestocking Blues

Loathly Lady

Mean

Glory Fabric

The Sexual Politics of Bluestockings

The Common Canadian Bluestocking

From The History of Bluestockings in Upper Canada

Are You In, Genius?

Emily Dickinson’s Reply to Billy Collins

The Love Song of Vivienne Haigh-Wood

The New Adventures of Sarah Binks, Prairie Bluestocking

The Justess

Still Life with Lorine Niedecker

A Scold Bridles

Requiem

Notes on Influences, Allusions, and Intertexts

Thanks and Acknowledgements

About the Author

Colophon

Flâneuserie

We walk. The city unfolds its blocks.

The sidewalk loves our feet to a pulp,

our blisters watery as eyes, but better

that a woman should walk these streets

than make