Tom Cull
Tom Cull teaches creative writing at Western University and was the Poet Laureate for the City of London from 2016-2018. Tom’s first collection of poems, Bad Animals, was published in 2018 by Insomniac Press. His chapbook, What the Badger Said, was published in 2013 (Baseline Press). His work has appeared in several journals and anthologies including, The Rusty Toque, Long Con Magazine, The Windsor Review, The New Quarterly, and Undocumented: Great Lakes Poet Laureates on Social Justice (Michigan State UP). Tom is the director of Antler River Rally, a grass roots environmental group he co-founded in 2012 with his partner Miriam Love. ARR works to protect and restore Deshkan Ziibing (Thames River). Tom is also an editor for Watch Your Head, an anthology of creative works devoted to climate justice.
Bad Animals
Tom Cull’s debut collection is equal parts zoo, funhouse, and curio cabinet. A mouthy badger tells off a search committee, a family of beavers conspires to commit murder, a celebrity seal slips his cage. In these poems, human and animal spaces overlap, often marking moments of transgression, rebellion, escape, and capture. Home and habitat are flooded with invasive species, cute animal videos, and rising tides.
Tom Cull with Danielle Butters & Sruthi Ramanarayanan
UpStream/DownStream,(still), 2020-2021
UpStream/DownStream is a project that brings together art and activism to focus on the question of clean drinking water and healthy river ecology. The work is comprised of two video ‘poems’ that were composed from footage taken at a number of river cleanups held in London, Ontario, and at Oneida Nation of the Thames—two communities that are connected by one river: Deshkan Ziibi/Thames River. Oneida First Nation is currently on a boil-water advisory due, in part, to the ways that the city of London and other upstream communities pollute the river. Volunteers were invited to participate in the cleanups and share their thoughts about what water means to them. .