Blue thinks itself within me: Lyric poetry, ecology, and lichenous form

“Part autotheory, part activist manifesto, and part ode to the oldgrowth specklebelly lichen, this book about making poems in an age of ecological desperation is both heartbreaking and beautiful.

Blue thinks itself within me chronicles the poet Kim Trainor’s experiences as an activist at the Ada’itsx / Fairy Creek blockade to prevent logging of Vancouver Island old growth forests…”

To order: Blue thinks itself within me

Oskana Poetry and Poetics / University of Regina Press

Published February 2026

Paperback : 9781779401205, 344 pages, February 2026
Hardcover : 9781779401212, 344 pages, February 2026
Ebook (EPUB) : 9781779401229, 344 pages, February 2026
Ebook (PDF) : 9781779401236, 344 pages, February 2026

Reviews:

“Blue thinks itself within me mesmerized me. This isn’t only a book of experimental poetics, it is an urgent call for ethical witnessing.”- Orchid Tierney, author of looking at the Tiny: Mad lichen on the surfaces of reading

“Powerfully delicate and precise. Kim Trainor excavates personal and political history and takes an approach to narrative that crafts research as poetry. I couldn’t put it down.”- Renée Sarojini Saklikar, author of children of air india

“By role-modeling curiosity and openness to unconventional answers, Trainor implores us to question our individual and collective roles and identities in the larger scope of existence. I did not expect to come away from this book feeling connected and hopeful, given the bleak reality of the climate crisis this work is tethered to, but I’m grateful I did. Through consulting and building upon numerous theories, sourcing from Indigenous artists and academics and traditions, philosophers, and poets, Trainor reaffirms the concept that all matter is essential and of equal worth and encourages readers to decentralize the human experience in order to allow space for new forms of thoughts and fresh perspectives to flourish and inspire actions. Layers of realization and possibilities evolve in real time with each chapter. Lichen are complicated systems, and so are we. It is difficult to put that all into a single, linear thread. Rather, Trainor succeeds at blending this synergetic amalgamation of theses. It is beautiful in its leisurely viscosity and its imperative and passionate tone.” –Hannah Briggs, Review of Blue thinks itself within me in The Miramichi Review, 9 July 2026

 

“My final aperture lands me smack in the middle of chapter 4, Vigilance, with the RCMP raiding Fairy Creek: ‘The RCMP came on foot, observing, taking photos across the bridge up the hill…one green, two blues,” writes Trainor. “The green was brusque—insisted we would have to move back to the middle of the bridge as they began the first extraction. A paddy wagon arrived, two or three cars, an excavator, three blues who stood and watched us from beyond the yellow caution tape they’d set up. Five or six blues and a green carried out the excavation with pickaxe, drills, chainsaw—chewing out pieces of wood from the support structure of the bridge. It was difficult to watch—imagining the woman in the hard block, fragile, flesh contra sharp and metal and electric tools. It took them two hours and forty-five minutes to excavate her. Intermittently, we stood on the bridge at the caution tape, singing, and calling encouragement to the girl.’

This harrowing passage brings to mind Phillip Zimbardo’s horrible Stanford Prison Experiment, where regular college boys transformed into the monstrous torturers of such infamous U.S. detention facilities as Abu Ghraib, within 6 days of being given the title of “guard” in a mock prison in the basement of the university. The image of uniformed men putting a young woman’s life at risk in order for the extractivist colony of the Empire to decimate the last of the world’s pristine old-growth forest, replete with endangered specklebelly lichen—a sign that the forest has been untouched since the Ice Age, is truly fucked.

I encourage everyone to acquire this important book and do as Kate suggested—open it whenever, wherever. Unless we start unravelling this capitalist nightmare system that is destroying everything we should know, love and feel cosmically connected to, we will lose it all. You can find the book in a lot of places, but I like to shop at indigenous-owned Massy Books in Chinatown.” 

–Jillian Maguire, “Anti-colonial Poetry”: A review of Blue thinks itself within me in BC BookLook, 1 June 2026