WTFrack 2013

Healing Inergy at its Gates by Dwain Wilder

12/31/2013

Verses from meditations at the Inergy LPG Complex
Seneca Lake, Reading, NY

Seneca Zazen
October 28, 2013

Sitting at Seneca Lake
hard by Inergy's gate,
dressed too light
for October's chill
as she gilds and garnets her treasure,
slowly and suddenly gathers mind.

The Sound of Sound
November 2, 2013

The live void drones
And in that sound, so solid
— Tapestry,
inexhaustible. Every,
so color, each yet not every,
dancing like a long cricket chorus
with time.

November’s Brilliance
November 4, 2013

Easy by Inergy’s gate,
meditating with doughty company
in the crisp autumn,
finding a little trash to rid.

Hard
November 11, 2013

Such dread today at Inergy’s gate,
while November sends her chilly wind,
toying with sheathed claws.
Then, during the day’s final round
unbidden peace, such peace.

Vigil
November 18, 2013

Autumn’s actinic light,
dappled by the rushing clouds,
gleams in the sentinel grass
by Seneca Lake.
What lies on some desk
in a capitol far from here,
the fate of such ordinary
fragile determination?

Grass Soldiers
November 25, 2013

Not yet snow-covered, its blades search
for sun, which warms just enough,
forming pores of slightest warmth
in the white blanket.

Fracking Dakota by Peter Neil Carroll

12/31/2013

The skinny woman behind the bar pops
bottle caps with two hands, never stops.
She’s lived five years on Bakkan Basin, sink
of oil, natural gas. Big changes, she brags.

Clear skies in summer, tawny hills swoop
to the horizon, spacious
as a dry ocean, maze of yellow-browns
hinting at tangles underground.

High-pressure chemicals pour
through earthen cracks, promising oil
four billion barrels, enough to make
normal people tolerate turmoil.

A farmer in overalls crosses the blacktop.
I don’t see another human for 160 miles
except a driver at the crest of a 24-carat acre
taking pictures of sunflowers.

The billboard reads: A SMILE INCREASES
YOUR FACE VALUE
Farmers live off camera, leave traces:
fence wire, water tanks; coils of hay

ripen by the roadside. A shed implodes,
a silver tag hangs from a cow’s ear.
A white pickup scorches over yellow lines
to pass five eighteen-wheelers, racing

head-on into traffic. The driver veers
left into the dirt, gray spirals rising,
shoots back two lanes, a man in a rush.
At Ludlow, a craftsman carved a cross high

as an A-framed church; in Buffalo, a thresher
hovers like sculpture. Over Bowman
a crop duster crawls, the pilot a shadow on glass.
Taxes up as land values rise, shrugs a man

on a barstool. Yeah, says the guy working
his sixth Fat Tire beer, now I got to buy
flood insurance. Paying the tab, thumbs
pick open a roll of hundred dollar bills.

At the center of a flaxen field splashes
of unearthly blue break the spectrum,
oil pumps bowing toward the land
like mechanical horses drawing oats.

The woman brewing coffee says blue pumps
aren’t worse than silver windmills. Those men,
her head tips vaguely west, send paychecks
home; an’ when the boom’s done
the digging stays underground, I hope.
Tanks shaped like hayricks cast

shadows on fresh-mowed wheat. Swarms
of spidery backhoes grind into
the soil. A gas-flare tints sooty air.
Fractured earth belches, coughs up gas,

grassland pulsing above subterranean seas.
Darkness carries dreams of power, vapors
lured from the underworld. Bedrock
prepares to heave, wakening the demon.

* * * *

"Fracking Dakota" originally appeared in Turtle Island Quarterly, Fall 2013. This poem has been reprinted with the poet's permission.

Peter Neil Carroll has been writing about the sense of American place for many years. He’s the author of a volume of poetry, Riverborne: A Mississippi Requiem (2008) and the memoir, Keeping Time (2011). His collection A Child Turns Back to Wave: Poetry of Lost Places has won the Americana Prize for Poetry, 2012 from the Institute for American Popular Culture. His poems have appeared recently in Written Rivers: A Journal of Eco-Poetics, PoetryBAY, and Sand Hill Review. He lives in northern California and reads frequently in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Drilling Down by Karla Linn Merrifield

11/27/2013

He places his zafu
just so over
the Marcellus shale
It cushions his prolonged
sesshins sitting zazen
He counters hydrofracking mines
offsets the mineral rights of toxicity
negates greed
with daily meditation
God is Money?
In Money we trust?
One nation under Money?
No. One man’s Zen practice informs
the poetry of survival
The dharma of petroleum remains
deep in empty mind

for Dwain Wilder
with a line from Ellen Maloy

Appeared in Le Mot Juste, 2012

* * * *
A seven-time Pushcart-Prize nominee and National Park Artist-in-Residence, Karla Linn Merrifield has had nearly 300 poems appear in dozens of journals and anthologies. She has eight books to her credit, the newest of which are The Ice Decides: Poems of Antarctica (Finishing Line Press) andLiberty’s Vigil, The Occupy Anthology: 99 Poets among the 99%, which she co-edited for FootHills Publishing. Forthcoming from Salmon Poetry is Athabaskan Fractal and Other Poems of the Far North. Her Godwit: Poems of Canada (FootHills) received the 2009 Eiseman Award for Poetry and she recently received the Dr. Sherwin Howard Award for the best poetry published in Weber - The Contemporary West in 2012. She is assistant editor and poetry book reviewer for The Centrifugal Eye (www.centrifugaleye.com). Visit her blog, Vagabond Poet, at http://karlalinn.blogspot.com.

"End Fracking Now" Banner Project

11/4/2013

The 2013 Great Lakes Bioneers Chicago networking event happened at Roosevelt University last weekend -- with dozens of wonderful discussions, keynote speeches, performances and other activities. I facilitated an interactive banner-making project at the university, in a sunlit alcove with a view of downtown Chicago and Lake Michigan in the distance.

The banner reads "End Fracking Now"; in addition to that phrase, event attendees contributed to it -- with words and illustrations that they drew and wrote on swatches of canvas. It was exciting to witness and be part of this community-interactive project, with dozens of people whose expressions appeared on the banner -- a "patchwork quilt" of creative and thoughtfully articulated voices about fracking.

Here are some photos of the project. (More photos will be added soon.) Check out the Great Lakes Bioneers Chicago website to find out more about the excellent work they have been doing.

-- Dan Godston

photograph by Jacques del Conte

9/19/2013

This photograph by Jacques del Conte was part of an exhibition about fracking that was shown at Exit Art Gallery (New York City, 2011). Photograph used with permission.

2013 Chicago Calling Arts Festival Event

9/7/2013

We're planning "Ars in Natura, Urbs in Horto," a 2013 Chicago Calling Arts Festival event that involves WTFrack 2013 -- which will happen in Gary, Indiana (on Saturday, October 12).

"Ars in Natura, Urbs in Horto" includes:

Panel discussion about the arts, nature, and urbanism -- with Kay Abraham, Walter Nelson Jones, Sandra Rodriguez, Corey Hagelberg, Lisa LaMarre, Sam Love, and James Cornish. We will focus on questions such as: What are some key features that define your practice? How have you drawn inspiration from your environment? What are some plans that you have, as you continue developing your practice?
Discussion about WTF2013 contributions
Poetry readings, including some poems contributed to this media gallery
Performance by the Great Lakes Ensemble

"Fracking the Shale" by Gloria Betlem

8/27/2013

Fracking the Shale -- detail from the original 12"x180" mixed media drawing

Gloria Betlem paints the natural world around her in upstate New York and central Florida. She specializes in the pastel medium, utilizing its wide spectrum of pure color to its fullest, in her vibrant interpretations. Increasingly, her work has taken on critical environmental issues, including carefully researched topics such as hydrofracking, preserving Hemlock and Canadice Lakes and Florida’s at-risk areas and species. She occasionally ventures out into other interests in her art, embracing portraiture and subjective imagery. Her work is in collections world-wide and she is a sought after, caring teacher. www.gloriabetlem.com

Fracking the Shale is part of a larger installation, "The Finger Lakes: Above & Below," which has been traveling throughout western New York. Fracking the Water is the artwork on the cover of Vigil for the Marcellus Shale, edited by Dwain Wilder and Bart White.

"Walleye Ate the Oilman" by John Roche

8/26/2013

Walleye ate the oilcan
ate the whole town, county, state of Pennsylvania,
United States of Self-Absorption
then exploded
In red, white, and blue flames
shooting out of Everyman’s water tap.
In a democracy, we get the firewater we deserve.

* * * *

"Walleye Ate the Oilman" appears in Vigil for the Marcellus Shale, edited by Dwain Wilder and Bart White.

John Roche teaches English at Rochester Institute of Technology. Three of his poetry collections, The Joe Poems (2012), Topicalities (2008) and On Conesus (2005), are available from Foothills Publishing, and Road Ghosts (2011, published by theenk Books, is available from SPDBooks.org. He has appeared in numerous magazines, including Yellow Medicine Review, House Organ, Big Bridge, and The Woodstock Journal. John is currently editing an anthology of poems about the mythic Joe the Poet for Beatlick Press, Albuquerque.

"What We Will Be When We Are Not" by Alice Zinnes

8/26/2013

What We Are When We Are Not by Alice Zinnes
Medium: oil on canvas
Dimensions: 11 x 14 inches
Copyright remains with the artist.

Balcombe -- Shale Gas Exploration & Anti-Fracking Demonstrations

8/25/2013

Here's some recent media coverage regarding shale gas exploration in Balcombe (UK):

"It is expected that the final cost of policing the protests, which are continuing on a much smaller scale, will eventually hit around £3.7 million.

"Anti-fracking activists are protesting about energy firm Cuadrilla's exploratory oil drilling operation in the countryside."
-- from "Are Balcombe fracking protests worth almost £4m in policing costs?" by Louise Gray (The Telegraph, 8/23/2013)

Links:

Balcombe anti-fracking protest – in pictures (The Guardian)
Caroline Lucas explains protest aims after fracking arrest in Balcombe - video (The Guardian)
Vivienne Westwood joins Balcombe fracking protest - video (The Telegraph)