Oyster Smells, Ranked
The whiff of the technocratic state
Cigarettes, third hand, clinging to type-written paper
Self-assured science, the world made legible to intervention
Viewed through black-rimmed lenses, yoked by a smart tie
Proposals, solutions, orders, and a disciplined expertise
But the oysters do not care, refusing to grow like the graph
They smell of the sea, salty and scouring and open
Having no truck with yellowed industrial policy
That searches for pearls as barnacle ancient collieries snap shut
The smoke of past industry remains only in a cardboard box
Jealously forgotten in an oceanic bureaucratic memory
But the oysters do no care, growing unmeasured
Note: This poem was written at the June 2024 DePOT Summer Institute in Belfast as part of a workshop on incorporating artistic practice into our research projects.
The poem refers to research at the Beaton Institute Archive I undertook after the previous year’s DePOT conference in Sydney, Canada. I looked at files from the state-owned Cape Breton Development Corporation’s oyster farming experiment, which was part of its plan to phase out coal mining for other economic activities. Upon opening the documents box, there was a strong smell of cigarette smoke on the papers from the 1970s. Smell is so connected with memory and this for me created an odd juxtaposition between my research on dry state policy and the lived experience of deindustrialization research many other folks in DePOT do.
