Warwick ecopoetics workshop

Sample course material from Warwick University - an enticing navigation through ecopoetics for graduate students in this module.

A sample week's material:

"Sound marks the “true north” of ecopoetics—not the only significant dimension of an environmental poetics, but often a reliable way to get oriented—a Compass Point for thinking, writing, speaking to get their bearings in a more-than-human world. An ecopoetics attends first by listening, whatever be its other vectors of engagement. (“Before it is polluted, the river wants to be heard,” writes Cecilia Vicuña.) Listening can be understood as a stance of participatory receptiveness, as much as an aural faculty (we can “listen” with our eyes or “sound” with science): it is difficult to be responsible to an environment, if we have not first listened in, to find out who is present"

With samples from John Cage, Emily Dickinson, Larry Eigner, Ronald Johnson, Nathaniel Mackey, Lorine Niedecker, Maggie OʼSullivan, R. Murray Schafer.

More information from Warwick University here..http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/english/currentstudents/postgraduate/masters/modules/ecopoetics/.

btw David Morley teachers at Warwick...

Ecopoetry in schools

Interesting details here of an outreach programme led by the Literature and American Studies departments at the University of East Anglia taking ecopoetry into schools and beyond.

Children in Years 5 and 6 (P6 and P7 here in Scotland) are encouraged to:

• "use the immediacy of their outdoor experiences to write poetry
• taught the importance of individual and communal responsibility to each other and to our natural world
• and how reflection on these issues provides a vital means of thinking and writing poetically." 

Not sure about thinking and writing poetically but maybe that is my prejudice and the word just needs reclaiming.

Anyone else had experience of visiting schools or outdoor spaces leading workshops. Let us know about it. [I will be in school next week but we are doing WW2 mash-ups.]

Or find out more about the existing programme here http://www.uea.ac.uk/ams/ecopoetry.

The wildflowers of a Berwickshire bard

John Leyden also features in this fine book by naturalist Michael Braithwaite and published by The Berwickshire Naturalists' Club. However the poet/bard in question is George Henderson 1800-1864: the founder member of the club. He writes in his poetry of the land clearance of the time and its effect on the natural environment.


Our bonny burn-sides they hae drained and dug,
The crook o’ the burn they altered too,
The green ferny knowes where the hare lay snug,
They hae cleared o’ ilka buss, and riven wi’ the pleugh.


As such it is an amazingly prescient work when compared to present habitat destruction to grow today's farming fads such as palm oil.

Available direct from Michael Braithwaite, Clarilaw Farmhouse, Hawick, Roxburghshire Scotland TD9 8PT at £7 (cheque to Berwickshire Naturalists' Club) including postage if you are in the UK. I recommend you correspond with Michael if you are outside UK and want a copy of this interesting book. Or use your judgement re: postage and add it to a sterling cheque, any extra could go to the next BNC publication.

You can find more here http://www.thesouthernreporter.co.uk/lifestyle/comment/the-rise-of-the-fall-is-something-to-behold-1-2596146

Indigenous ecopoetics

Ecopoetics has been a field of creative and academic interest in Australia for many years (millenia?). Here is a great looking course at the University of Sydney that builds on that...

The representation of nature has been central to human expression for thousands of years. Contemporary transnational ecopoetics situates nature and culture amidst present-day ecological catastrophes and political environmentalisms. This unit examines a uniquely Australian contribution to this field -Country - which for Australian Indigenous peoples denotes special cosmological, filial and custodial relations to land...

More information available here http://sydney.edu.au/courses/uos/KOCR3605/writing-country-indigenous-ecopoetics and more on that heritage here http://www.australianhumanitiesreview.org/archive/Issue-September-2006/eco_index.html.

And thank you to Tourism NT for the use of this image.

Entanglements

Tantalising new book of ecopoetry which may end up in our beautiful books series...

Published by Two Ravens Press (an independent publisher of books and the Earthlines magazine). This has great contributors and ours is due to arrive end of September. Can't wait.

Order now here http://www.earthlines.org.uk/Entanglements.html.

And extra good reason to buy is that contributor royalties from sales of Entanglements will be donated to the John Muir Trust: www.jmt.org.

Ecopoetry and academia

"The dividing line between creative writing and climate science - sometimes thin - has been triumphantly dissolved. " Andrew Orlowski

Can you study ecopoetry? Well, it seems you can and in a scientific context at the University of East Anglia.

Its interesting looking new masters course in Environmental Sciences and Humanities is recruiting. Its blurb states amongst other things that it plans to gather "researchers in the environmental sciences, philosophy, history and literature to develop new ways of thinking about environmental change and social transitions".

 

Details of the course can be found here http://www.uea.ac.uk/phi/courses/ma-environmental-sciences-and-humanities#overview and a commentary from The Register here http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/04/02/rosie_may/.

btw image is the cover of the anthology Earth Shattering ecopoems edited by Neil Astley from Bloodaxe 2007 (ahead of the times as ever).

Birling Wood

What with all the shenanigans with the woods and Forestry Commission sell off, my audio tree project has had to take a back seat for a bit. Good news is that the government forest give away sale has been called off (for the moment).

My project has evolved a bit in its scope: I am calling it Birling Wood. I have still yet to evolve a mic set up that doesn't require quite a bit of attendance. Also not sure if I can leave the equipment in the wood where I am working safely. It is quiet place apart from the section we are in the middle of felling. And my kit is not technically impressive stuff but that doesn't mean no one will be taking it.

However the act of checking has its own rewards, I almost ran into a fox the other day. A female it scarpered as soon as it saw me. We had been hidden from each other by a bend in the path. I had been looking at the start of the wild garlic cover. It already smells pungent. Then the cheerful face appeared. The same thing can happen with stoats. I once encountered a family of weasels crossing (probably their regular crossing, it is on my list to go and check this out by observation). Some big dogs had passed with their owner the other way and so my passage went unnoticed. Weasels are like a mini feather boa on a string; they move fast even on their own time. I had time to sense the younger ones playing.

So I need a mindset not dissimilar to Clym Yeobright to sit quietly and listen along with the mic, and I look forward to having it and to composing the words that will go along with the recorded sound. At the moment, I feel my lack of clothing, well the right clothing. It is hard to get things dry where I am living. My jacket has acquired that smell that rainproof material gets when it never drys out. But then you look at the leaf shards of green ramson and smell that oniony smell, the warm earth. It is not warm but something is moving in it.

It is all to look forward to.