Seminar at UDP: the New Eco-Poetics with Leonard Schwartz

The relationship between nature and history is complex, so much so that the space between nature and the human, being and language, may not even be measurable. Yet the environmental imperatives of our moment are the decisive ones.  Is the poem mimetic of nature, or a function of it? How could such a seemingly noble enterprise as “environmentalism”‘ or “protecting nature” be problematic? How have powerful imaginaries and narratives served to dangerously simplify how environmental problems and their solutions are conceptualized? What poems and poets actualize an imaginary of nature with ecological intelligence? The New Eco-Poetics with Leonard Schwartz will explore creative and critical approaches to language, with a view to reframing our understanding of the relationship between nature and history. Possible readings together that day might be drawn from Chilean poet Raul Zurita’s Inri, Kamau Brathwaite’s “Namsetoura”, Brenda Iijima’s Eco-Language Reader, Jed Rasula’s This Compost, Camille Dungy’s Black Nature, and, curiously, Sappho’s fragments as translated by Anne Carson in If Not, Winter.

Includes 3 free UDP books. Limited to 10 participants. Registration here.