ABSTRACT
Poetry is the site par excellence of micro-events and non-events. It is therefore largely concerned with the question of what happens when nothing happens. Two contemporary poets, Pattiann Rogers and Kathleen Jamie, have tried to answer this question in varied and intersecting ways. Their vision of a world where agency is extended beyond its traditional human locus links them with Quentin Meillassoux’s concept of contingency, Timothy Morton’s ecological thought and Bruno Latour’s understanding of actions and events. This chapter probes the poem’s responses to the question of what happens when nothing happens. Some poems explore the alternative to events, while others create pockets where ‘nothing happens’ reminiscent of the holes in Morton’s mesh. What happens when nothing happens is an instance of ubiquity, either spatial or temporal, either in the actors or in the near and micro-events themselves. This ubiquity produces intensity which turns them into fuller events, worthy to be recounted in the poems. Other poems seek to establish a more stable ontology for events, a place where events become prior to their actants. Then, the difficulty of thinking together the necessary stasis that comes with the idea of priority and the flux inherent in any happening brings in yet another world-making tension – yet another poetic event.
