The Vibrancy of Materiality and Otherwise-Than-Place in Susan Gillis’s Obelisk (2017)

Abstract

This article deals with Obelisk (2017), a poetry collection by Canadian Susan Gillis (b. 1959) concerned with the impact of human action on Earth in a myriad of forms. Drawing on a wide spectrum of poets, thinkers and artists, including Du Fu, Czeslaw Milosz, Walter Benjamin, John Dixon Hunt, Don McKay, Xi Chuan and Edward Burtynsky, Obelisk looks like an essay in fragments where Gillis assembles the precious insights of her ancestors to shed light on homo sapiens’ intromission into physical space to make the Earth suit human needs. When put together, her heavily annotated and erudite poems read like a denunciation of the indelible mark humans are leaving on the face of the Earth to make it a habitable space, whilst destroying it in the process. However, there is room in Obelisk for a probing reflection on wilderness and place, for a celebration of the vitality of matter and the more-than-human world, for an environmentally-informed critique of the way human action is having a colossal impact on the planet in the age of the Anthropocene, and for a meditation on what poetry can do in the light of environmental degradation to encourage humanity to act and live responsibly on Earth. Thus, Obelisk warns readers against the destruction of the biosphere and celebrates the persistente of poetry as a mode of knowing and as a tool for fashioning an environmental ethics.