Resistance
University of Regina Press / 19 August 2021

Resistance: Righteous Rage in the Age of #MeTooEdited by Sue GoyettePublished by University of Regina PressReview by Elena Bentley$24.95 ISBN 9780889778016 “[E]very woman has these / stories / or worse / even if they don’t / realize / it yet.” Poems written in response to the 2016 Jian Ghomeshi verdict fill the pages of Resistance: Righteous Rage in the Age of #MeToo, edited by Griffin Poetry Prize nominee and current Halifax Regional Municipality Poet Laureate Sue Goyette. This anthology aims to be an act of artful activism, offering “relief from [the] silence” perpetuated by a legal system that “excus[es] or pardon[s] the perpetrator’s crime.” It is a place to speak and be heard. And, most importantly, it is a space where “a collective of people… have chosen poetry to process an experience of violence.” Of the four sections into which these masterclass poems are divided, the first, “Innocence/Exposure,” is the most difficult to read as the poems are highly affective and unsettling. Men collect, pull, play games with, crouch over, stare, poke, grab, paw, pin, grope, and pinch the young girls in these poems. The speaker in Marion Mutala’s poem says these experiences “chang[e] who you become.” But, luckily, this…