Ex-Posed : Animal Elegies

Following on from Zoospeak, Scottish poet Gordon Meade''s reflections on the lives of animals in zoos and aquaria as photographed by Toronto-based award-winning photojournalist Jo-Anne McArthur and gathered in her book Captive, EX-POSED turns its attention to McArthur''s 2020 curated collection Hidden: Animals in the Anthropocene. Organized into seven sections that cover the experiences of nonhuman animals in factory farms, industrial fisheries, live markets, entertainment, religion, fashion, and amid the climate crisis, each of Meade''s poems takes the form of an elegy "penned" by the nonhuman animals who, due to many different circumstances, find themselves on death row. As with the source material in Hidden, the tenor of EX-POSED is direct and unapologetic, with each poem attempting to capture the essence of the creatures and the horrific situations in which they find themselves. "It''s my hope," says Meade, "that my words can give voice to the creatures in EX-Posed so that they might be both seen and, in some small way, also heard."