Eco-Poetic Inquiry: The Poetry of Place

• In Event: What Is a Poem Good For? The Possibilities of Poetic Inquiry Within Educational Research

Abstract

Compose. (No ideas
but in things). Invent!
Saxifrage is my flower that splits
the rocks.

(William Carlos Williams, A Sort of Song)


Objectives

What is the value of eco-poetry, as an arts-based teaching, learning and research method, in developing ecoliterate understanding in urban communities? Given the emphasis on localized experience amongst both environmental educators and urban literacy theorists, this performance uses eco-poetry to explore how first-hand experience of local environments may be expressed as poetic narrative that brings transformative understanding of the earth.


Theoretical framework

While current educational and political discourse calls for sustainable management of the earth’s resources, environmentalist educators (Bowers 2006, Orr 2004, Shiva 2005, Plumwood 2002, Armstrong 2000) state that a shift in practice must be preceded by a shift in perspective that includes tangible, first-hand awareness of local environments. Meanwhile, studies around ‘alternative literacies’ using arts-based methods promote urban student experience and expression of their local neighbourhoods (Morrell 2002, Keiser 2000). Val Plumwood (2002) suggests that in order to stimulate ecological awareness, the language of learning itself must change: “For the narrative itself...is a key part of the problem, leading us to reproduce continuously the same elements of failure...while we seek desperately for solutions within it.” As environmentalists call for expressions of nature that include a sense of “love, awe, mystery...and caution” (Orr 2004) there is also a need for language that will permit and inspire such awareness.

How might eco-poetry, as an arts-based method, help create new understanding between teachers, learners, researchers and their local ecologies?


Modes of inquiry

Eco-poetry is the practice of bearing witness to one’s natural surroundings in the poetic language of the senses, particularly as it relates to the places where humans intersect with the natural environment. Eco-poetic practice includes the documentation of the real ways humans interact, and have interacted, with their surroundings. This performance involves a series of eco-poems drawn from the local natural environment of urban Vancouver British Columbia, followed by commentary on the value of eco-poetic inquiry in schools and education research.


Data sources

Data sources include a series of eco-poems written in urban Vancouver British Columbia.


Results

Stories are embedded in the natural world, beyond the English classroom. The natural environment is deeply embedded in story, beyond the Science classroom. The inclusion of the poetic imagination in ecological literacy brings to life new connections between learning and land that allows all learners to understand deeper questions about their roles as story-tellers in the larger world.


Significance

Poetry brings new, profound awareness to environmental learning yet such understanding can be difficult to prove using standardized methods of learning and measurement. Nonetheless, some of the most transformative moments in environmental learning typically revolve around experience in the natural environment and the poetic sharing of that experience. As poets have known across centuries it is possible, even easy, to make profound connections to the land through language, in a way that leaves the lightest of footprints.

Author

• Veronica Gaylie, The University of British Columbia