Field Notes on Listening

By (author): Kit Dobson

When Kit Dobson’s daughter looked at the field of stars on the screen at the beginning of a new Star Wars movie in the theatre and remarked to her father, “Yeah, right. There’s not that many stars,” Dobson suddenly realized his daughter had never truly seen the night sky. From then on Dobson began to think seriously about how little we, as humans, interact with the natural world and how that has changed our place within it. Field Notes on Listening is a response to our lack of connection to the land we call home, the difficult history of how many of us came to be here and what we could discover if we listened deeply to the world around us. Written in brief, elegant sections, Field Notes on Listening starts at Dobson’s kitchen table, a family heirloom, and wends through time and space, looking at his family’s lost farm, the slow violence of climate change, loss of habitat, the tensions of living in late-stage capitalism and through careful listening strives to find a way through it all, returning, in the end, to home and the same table.

AUTHOR

Kit Dobson

Kit Dobson lives and writes in Calgary. He has lived across Canada and in the UK. The author / editor of three academic books, he is also the editor of Please, No More Poetry: The Poetry of derek beaulieu and a faculty member at Mount Royal University.


Reviews

“In Malled, Kit Dobson asks why the mall, recently marked by such notable closings, isn’t a Canadian culture story, too. Why are these spaces not widely reflected in literature, music and film? … Where Dobson is at his best is analyzing the concrete, whether reading Calgary’s CrossIron Mills or Gary Burns’s 2000 film waydowntown. An important start on a subject that has received surprisingly little attention in Canada.”


– Globe and Mail

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When Kit Dobson’s daughter looked at the field of stars on the screen at the beginning of a new Star Wars movie in the theatre and remarked to her father, “Yeah, right. There’s not that many stars,” Dobson suddenly realized his daughter had never truly seen the night sky. From then on Dobson began to think seriously about how little we, as humans, interact with the natural world and how that has changed our place within it. Field Notes on Listening is a response to our lack of connection to the land we call home, the difficult history of how many of us came to be here and what we could discover if we listened deeply to the world around us. Written in brief, elegant sections, Field Notes on Listening starts at Dobson’s kitchen table, a family heirloom, and wends through time and space, looking at his family’s lost farm, the slow violence of climate change, loss of habitat, the tensions of living in late-stage capitalism and through careful listening strives to find a way through it all, returning, in the end, to home and the same table.

Reader Reviews

Details

Dimensions:

156 Pages
8.5in * 5.5in * 0.32in
240gr

Published:

June 14, 2022

City of Publication:

Hamilton

Country of Publication:

CA

ISBN:

9781989496541

Book Subjects:

LITERARY COLLECTIONS / Canadian

Featured In:

All Books

Language:

eng

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Other books by Kit Dobson

Malled

By (author): Kit Dobson