Minutes over Monuments: Re-Reading the Kootenay School of Writing (as) Archive

Abstract

This paper examines the work of several writers affiliated with Vancouver's Kootenay School of Writing (KSW). It was written through original primary research in multiple archives, and takes a new approach to reading this work. I posit that we read the work of the writers affiliated with KSW, which has typically been read through similar critical approaches to those taken to language poetry, as both an archive and a repertoire of a community at a particular historical period, the long neoliberal moment. I discuss several writers whose work has been critically neglected, including Kevin Davies, Jeff Derksen, Lisa Robertson, Colin Smith, and Deanna Ferguson.