Reports & Reflections on the Ecopoetics Conference

We really, really really wanted to attend the Ecopoetics Conference last weekend in Berkeley. Alas, we did not. Happily, though, reports and write-ups from various events are already being posted.

Michael Cross at The Disinhibitor has posted C.J. Martin's talk on Helen Adam which was part of the "(Im)Permeable Matter: Rocks, Stones, Minerals." Also available for download is Laura Moriarty's contribution to the "Ecopoetics Through Travel" panel. And Cross promises to post more talks as poets make them available!

We've also been reading through Groundworks, the blog documenting "a collaborative lab" which took place at the conference. The site includes contributions from Jolie Kaytes, Laura Mullen, Linda Russo, Hazel White and Jen Coleman, among others. Recent posts include reflections and "provocations" from each of the panelists, as well as photos from the event. Linda Russo's provocation is especially interesting:

Experimental/Experiential Geography : Geography - accounting for the presences, interactions, and flows in a place. Experimental - exercising/inventing dynamic humanimal being as a locus in a field of relations (energy conversion and information exchange). Geography - the trace of the ideologies and processes that produce (our relations to) to places. Experiential - sensitive to the conditioning that prompts the act of, and what we gather from, perception. Geography - what is (being) written in the event of a place. Experimental - punching holes in the assumptions that lay maps flat in discrete squares. Experimental - counter-mapping. Geography - enacting and/or inscribing new/overlooked gestures or marks. What is manifesting within, rearticulating through, being excluded from, or redefining this place? What writers/writings are underfoot, entangled in their own relations? Who or what is writing? What gestures can (re)inscribe/are (re)inscribing? What can you offer, perform, inscribe as a reconfiguration? What might an experimental/experiential geography of this moment-place look like? What might it reveal? Where is the “eco” in such a poetics? “Look the ground in the eye” – Richard Long.

We look forward to more documentation from and reflections on the conference.