Feral Poetics

Reflecting on the ecopoetics conference. Lots to sift through and think about. Thought I would share my abstract here. I'm already thinking of ways to amend and refine the ways I would describe a feral poetics, so consider this a work in progress.

Troubling the Field: Feral Poetics, Feminism, and the Politics of the Anti-Pastoral

Representations of nature and creaturely life, both in poetry and in the language of
environmentalism, remain haunted by the pastoral tradition. As a feminist, I am often concerned by the tacit acceptance of a pastoral frame in writing about nature. In my work as a writer and reader, I have experimented with a feral poetics as way to trouble pastoralism’s duplicitous and highly gendered fantasies of nature as "wild," “pure,” “unpopulated,” and outside of historical and political time. A feral poetics destabilizes these fantasies, and feral texts articulate and recover the subjects otherwise contained or made invisible by pastoralism’s narratives of nature, nation, state, and species.

In this presentation––part of a continuing project that meditates upon the politics of interspecies affiliations, affinities, and alliances––I outline the contours of a feral poetics, situating it as both an aesthetic and scholarly project of refusing/resisting pastoralism, recalling that pastorlism has often served as the warrant for settler colonialism, racism, and imperialism. In light of a feral poetics, writers, thinkers, and creatures as diverse as Bhanu Kapil, Claudia Rankine, Bernadette Mayer, Donna Haraway, Elizabeth Grosz, Trinh T. Minh-ha, Audre Lorde, Lorine Niedecker, Emily Dickinson, the feral ponies of Assateague Island and New Zealand’s celebrity ovine “Shrek” the sheep can be seen as co-conspirators in a common endeavor.

feralscape

Meet Mr. Muffin

in a fantasy I am fully manifest as animal -- whiskers to tail --licking my paw, sniffing the air.

it's like all I ever think about is fantasy, and animals, and how gender is a ghost and we're all haunted whether we like it or not

Alexander McQueen

Delirious Hem

My post on feminism & poetry is up at Delirious Hem. I also share some items from my commonplace book: Women and animals: Are they real?

image: "Parts" by Lorna Simposn

AfterPlath

wound the old hole fashion

a thing sparkling, yellow jacket

sting-wings, plastic sheep bobbing

horizon-green, propeller-stung

kitty hanging synthroid

_________shudder cupboard

clean cat, claws pink: meat-making

mud-hooves, cork-screw

squeal, squid's ink in a jar

the dead dove's eye

gold in her slit

More Birds

Yesterday, I noticed a gray dove outside the enclosed seabird pond area. The dove looked like the doves in the aviaries, and so I suspected that it had escaped and then found its way back. Later, June said that she had given the dove to a neighbor, and that it must have escaped from its new home and come back. I went out of the enclosure and tried to net the bird so I could get it back inside, but it was difficult and the bird eluded the small, soft net. After several more failed attempts, I decided to put some seed on the roof of one of the aviaries. As it turned out, there was a hole in the net there, and I hoped that the bird might find its way back inside. Later, I noticed that this was the case; the bird had made its way in and was flying against the screens of the aviaries.

There was also a cormorant who we needed to net so that we could remove its wing wrap. It too was elusive, but at last,when it was in the water, J was able to scoop it up. Unfortunately, it became stuck in the net. At first we though it was stuck because one of its toenails had become stuck in the mesh, but what we thought was a toenail was actually a fishhook that had embedded itself in the cormorants foot. It took us quite awhile to untangle the net and remove the hook. There was blood.

There were ten cormorants at the pond -- the most I've ever seen -- and 8 pelicans. They had planned to do a release at dos pueblos ranch, but they had to reschedule because they were doing a photoshoot at the ranch that day. It was a shoot for Playboy magazine, and it was a closed set. The birds will be released there next week.

Delirious Hem Delirious Summer

I love summer. It is when I read the most.

Delirious Hem had an amazing forum on feminist poetics last month, and at some point I have things to say about it.

Check out the newest forum on Deviant Beach Reads, curated and organized by Danielle Pafunda.

Test 10

Test 9

Test 8

test 7

test 6

test 5

test 4