Burnham's poetry works at the edges of meaning, propriety, and the commodification of language. Combining elements of found text—the overheard, the over-read—he recasts his findings in various combinations that are unique to their presentation on the page. The essentials of language, how people use it—and how it uses them—is Burnham's main concern. Whether inspiration arises from a 1920s newspaper clipping (poems formulated in the structure of newspaper columns that can be read either horizontally or vertically), as in "98Ruskin," or grows out of interactions with street youth in poetry workshops in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside, "Poverty Pimp," or is diffused from snippets of conversation on a bus, the nuances of speech—rhythm, inflection, insinuation, the multiplicity of meaning—get filtered down and assimilated with the daily hum and buzz of the immediate world around him. "Chicken Fallujah" and "Rental Van" grew out of a trip to San Francisco during the spring of 2004, when the US Marine assault on Fallujah in Iraq was in full swing. In a text replete with cultural references and riffs on the morphing of language, Burnham shows us how words are powerful implements that are invariably wrenched to accommodate the needs of the user. From gang lingo signifiers to urban iconography, Rental Van demonstrates that language is indeed the "nurse and oxygen tent of epistemology."
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About the Author
Clint Burnham is a Vancouver writer and critic. His books include Rental Van (poetry, 2007), Smoke Show (novel, 2005; nominated for the BC Book Prize that year), Buddyland (poetry, 2000), Airborne Photo (short stories, 1999), and Be Labour Reading (poetry, 1997). He also writes frequently on contemporary art, in such venues as artforum.com, Flash Art, Camera Austria, The Globe and Mail, The Vancouver Sun, C Magazine, fillip, Pyramid Power, etc. He teaches English at Simon Fraser University.
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