Dead White Men
A vital collection that interrogates the stories of the dead white men that litter our histories and landscapes.
Winner of the 2018 Ottawa Book Award and finalist for the 2018 Archibald Lampman Award.
Juxtaposing the seemingly benign names of Europeans that permeate our geographies with the details of their so-called discoveries and conquests, Dead White Men turns ideas of exploration, discovery, finding and keeping back upon themselves. Engaging with exploration and scientific texts from the fifteenth to the nineteenth centuries – texts wrapped up in the history and ongoing present of colonization – this collection builds a fascinating poetry of memory out of histories that are largely forgotten.
‘A provocative and galvanizing read … Riveting and dazzling invention is visible on almost every page: fonts shift size, language cascades and cleaves, and images disrupt order. Dead White Men should be widely read and taught. ’
– Eduardo C. Corral, author of Slow Lightning
‘Dead White Men is not only a searing indictment of colonialism but also a painful reminder of the violence that underpins the logic of exploration. Each poem strikes at the heart of the issue: there are often unarticulated, unacknowledged Indigenous presences here that have been flattened over by the lies and mirages of empty landscapes. Dead White Men is a stinging and difficult journey, and one that continues to remind us that stolen land has always been the most pressing concern for Indigenous peoples and settlers. This is an absolutely essential book. ’
– Jordan Abel, author of Injun
Reviews
“Shane Rhodes’s book travels back in time to examine the era of European explorers and scientists – those creators and beneficiaries of terra nullius. Rhodes approaches Dead White Men as historical poltergeists whose world view still haunts us” The Globe and Mail
“Shane Rhodes’s stunning sixth collection of poetry repurposes settler texts with pioneering deftness (words cascade, fonts change, statues silhouette, language obliterates), using poetry to critically interrogate the Eurocentrism found in many foundational settler texts.” The Malahat Review
“Dead White Men is a powerful book. The writing is vivid and visceral, and, crucially for a book like this, the poems work both individually and in conversation with each other. It is above all a well-crafted book.” Prairie Fire
“From its language, to its style, to its content, to its form, to its experiments, this is work that stay with you for a long time after you have been released from their strangling grip. This is work that articulates a higher consciousness of poetry and history, interrogating who we are and why we must continue to critique where we have come from, and the spaces we continue to occupy . . .” Cordite (Australia)
X: poems and antipoems
In X, Rhodes takes poetry from the comfortable land of the expected to places it has seldom been. Writing through the detritus of Canada's colonization and settlement, Rhodes' writes poems to and with Canada's original documents of finding and keeping. He writes a poem to each of the eleven numbered treaties (the Post Confederation Treaties between many of Canada's First Nations and the Queen of England)--he writes to the fonts he finds in Treaty 5, the river he finds in Treaty 6, and the chemicals he finds in Treaty 8. Rhodes' writes poems to and with the Indian Act.
Beyond the treaties, Rhodes writes formal poetry using Indian status registration forms. He writes to the memory of Oka. He writes to the Government of Canada's Apology for the Indian Residential School System. He writes to the procreating beavers he finds in the Royal Charter of the Hudson Bay Company. X culminates in "White Noise," a long poem grown from Canada's collective racist rants, threats, cries and shouts and occasional whispers of hope in response to the Idle No More protests and the hunger strike of Chief Theresa Spence.
Through out the book, Rhodes surprises with what poetry and art can actually do with the seemingly unsalvageable and un-poetic that surrounds us. The design of X is also exhilarating. Not only is the book reversible--it must be read in two directions--but every page bursts with design, interference and thought.
Reviews
“Shane Rhodes’ sixth book is X: Poems & Anti-Poems. The title is exact: The poems project Malcolm X-like, anti-racist rage to protest the “X”-ing out of Indigenous peoples’ rights to culture and prosperity in Canada and they do so in unapologetic, experimental style.“ The Chronicle Herald
“Visually, the sharply-designed book offers a darkly pleasing engagement with artifact, silhouette, and typography . . .” Catherine Owen
“Let me be clear, I think Shane Rhodes' Poems & Anti-Poems is the most important book of poetry I have seen in years.” Michael Dennis, Today’s Book of Poetry
For a free, downloadable PDF of this book, please go to: X: poems and antipoems
Err
Finalist of the 2012 Ottawa Book Award and featuring poems that won the 2010 National Magazine Gold Award for Poetry and the PK Page Founders Award for Poetry.
Sex, booze, war and wordplay collide loquaciously in Err, the latest collection from innovative and accomplished poet Shane Rhodes. Equally amusing and stunning with his joyful manipulation of language and his stark portrayals of disease and oppression, Rhodes tackles everything from AIDS to martinis with style, wit and clarity.
The book is divided into four themed sections, each of which focuses on a different sphere of life and creativity. "Spirits" amends the current scarcity of drinking poems with humourous, effervescent musings, whereas "Bodies" looks at the ravages of sex, disease and death. "The Cloud Chamber" traces the breakdown of language and sound into poems that interrogate letters, phonemes and jargon, while "Dark Matter" investigates new ways of writing and thinking about poetry.
A master of alliteration, allusion, rhyme and rhythm, Rhodes shakes up a verbal cocktail of vibrant musicality that appeals to the imagination and remains in the memory. This distinctive collection makes for delightful, unusual and engaging reading.
Mining this relentlessly inventive collection of lyrics, I discovered what Rhodes could really do with language. In Us the speaker's homoerotic experience is breathless ... [t]his is the cryptic Rhodes, condensing landscapes of human experience into single phonemes. And then there is the meditative Rhodes, contemplating, in Fixed, the moment of his Ukrainian uncle's death ... Always in Rhodes, Self and human experience must become the substance of language itself, unERRingly.
Reviews
”Err is a talented, drunken kiss from a silver tongue. It lingers ... as a brilliant, but sometimes bitter, taste in the mouth.” The Globe and Mail
”If you appreciate when poets twist and stretch language to see how far it can go, then Rhodes's Err is for you.” The Malahat Review
“Rhodes demonstrates his expert use of language in The Cloud Chamber, the book's third chapter. In seeking out specific sounds within language, the poet creates works that are not only a joy to hear, but also a joy to read. ... [Err] is a genuinely entertaining piece of literature--a book to make you laugh, cry, and perhaps order another round.” The Wig
”[Shane Rhodes's] latest book, Err, is his conscious quest to explore the underpinnings of what he practises as an art form. ... For example, for some poems Rhodes reverses the traditional method of composing--adding piece onto piece--and explores a different and fascinatingly startling method.” Ottawa XPress
”Life's vices can combine into one volatile cocktail. Err is a collection of poetry from Shane Rhodes, as he talks on the dark underbelly of life and what we're searching for when we're under there. Pulling no punches and speaking on every subject he can think of, Err is a riveting work that values entertainment alongside its message.” Small Press Bookwatch
For a free, downloadable PDF of this book, please go here: Err
The Bindery
Winner of the 2008 Lampman-Scott Award for Poetry (here is the CBC article about why I refused to take prize money from the Duncan Campbell Scott Foundation and instead donated it to the Wabano Centre for Aboriginal Health).
This third collection from award winning poet Shane Rhodes takes off in full flight from where his other books left off. Tracing concurrent themes of travel, love, personal and collective history, all in a rich multifaceted style unique to Rhodes, The Bindery is writing that combines moving lyrical poetry with experimental verve. One of the main sections of the book is a series of prose poems based on travels through Latin America where we are taken from the Conquistadores to the Mexican revolution, and all the way to the present and shop-keepers in Mexico City. Other poems in the book look at travel to India, Argentina, and across Canada through language, history, and collected stories. The title poem of the book, a remarkable long poem, is a rich collage of lyrical and prose poems with haiku, philosophical meditations, aphorisms, and photographs.
The Bindery is a collection of hurried scribbles in Mexican bus terminals, meditations on street corners in Buenos Aires, letters from friends in the Himalaya, and odes from the Canadian hinterland. The book's emphasis is on how to live and travel in a life bound-up with language and history, how to read the present through the past, how to be awake in the world and, as one poem states, how "to be stained by what we see. "
For a free, downloadable PDF of this book, please go here: The Bindery
As this book is out of print, please contact me if you would like a hard copy.
Holding Pattern
Winner of the 2002 Lampman Award for Poetry.
Rhodes investigates the boundaries between poetry and fiction through a selection of lyrical poems and two long poems. A love affair unfolds alongside excerpts from Kafka’s journals. A pornographer remembers his childhood. The end of a relationship takes place in the banter between footnotes and a poem. This second collection places Rhodes within a small group of young, talented writers at the breaking point—and forefront—of Canadian poetry.
As this book is out of print, please contact me if you would like a hard copy.
The Wireless Room
Winner of the 2000 Alberta Book Award for Poetry.
The Wireless Room is a stunning first collection of poems ranging from studies in western pastoral history through high-flying evocations of sub-atomic particles to deeply personal poems about and for parents. Rhodes is one of the most accomplished young poets to appear on the scene in a long time.
As this book is out of print, please contact me if you would like a hard copy.