Angela Hume: Place and Making in Ecopoetics

Past Event
July 21,2017


~Co-presented by PRNSA and the Mesa Refuge~

Angela Hume was a 2016 invitational National Endowment for the Arts Fellow for the inaugural program held jointly by Point Reyes National Seashore Association and the Mesa Refuge. She is a poet and critic from Oakland, who is the author of the book Middle Time and the chapbooks Melos, The Middle, and Second Story of Your Body. Her research and critical writing explore intersections between 20th and 21st century “lyric” poetry, women’s writing, and ecological consciousness. Angela invites students to explore the intersection of place and making in ecopoetics.

Friday, July 21, 2017 – 12:00pm to Sunday, July 23, 2017 – 4:00pm
Accomdations at historic Lifeboat Station at Chimney Rock in Point Reyes National Seashore

Fee:  $220 / Non-Member Fee: $250
Find out more and register on PRNSA’s website

***

What is ecopoetics? The word’s root, poetics, comes from the Greek “poiesis,” meaning “to make.” Its prefix, eco, comes from the Greek “oikos,” meaning “family and house.” Given this etymology, we might understand ecopoetics, simply, as home making—the practice of cultivating a healthy and livable place. Certainly such a practice could be supported by any number of different activities, from writing, visual art, and performance, to farming, ecological restoration, community organizing, and activist work.

Over the past two decades, writers, artists, and critics have taken up the project of imagining ecopoetics in its relationship to writing and art practices in particular. The term ecopoetics is now frequently used to refer to ecologically oriented poetry and other textual forms. Today some poets and writers use the term ecopoetics to delineate formally innovative contemporary /writing concerned with today’s most pressing environmental challenges.

In this workshop, we will explore the term ecopoetics through our own creative, site-specific writing and art practices on Point Reyes National Seashore. We will ask: what does it mean to write poetry in a time of unprecedented ecological crisis? What role might experimental writing play in shaping or changing cultural attitudes about the natural world? In addition to creating poems and other textual and art objects, we will take our ecopoetics practices beyond the page through active engagement with local ecologies and environmental issues, and we will write in response to these expanded ecopoetics practices.

No previous creative writing experience is required for this workshop. Participants are encouraged to experiment with hybrid writing and art practices. All all welcome!