ENG5042H: Justice and Form in Contemporary Canadian Ecopoetry

This course will focus on Canadian ecopoetry, a form of poetry that is inspired by "nature" but departs from traditional nature poetry by engaging with environmental politics. We will begin with selections of late twentieth century poetry that is not consciously ecological yet evokes various forms of ecological interrelatedness. We will then read contemporary ecopoetry that self-consciously investigates the role of language and poetry in responding to current environmental crises. In reading this body of work, we will pay special attention to the diversity of formal and aesthetic strategies that Canadian ecopoetry encompasses, from the activism of Rita Wong and Stephen Collis, to the linguistic experimentalism of Dionne Brand and Canisia Lubrin, to the scientifically inspired poetics of Adam Dickinson and Christian Bök, to the anti-colonial aesthetics of Leanne Simpson and Craig Santos Perez. We will consider such questions as: What formal experiments are contemporary Canadian poets drawing upon in order to respond to the pressures of living in a 21st century marked by anthropogenic change? Can a poem be considered "ecological" even if it is not explicitly concerned with "nature" or the "environment"? How does contemporary ecopoetry speak to the intersections between environmental, social, and racial justice?

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St. George