Ecocritical Imaginations in Contemporary Russian and Polish Poetry

Session Submission Type: Panel

Brief Description

This panel explores ecocritical approaches in contemporary Russian and Polish poetry, examining how poetic form responds to ecological crises and reflects our evolving relationship with the environment and non-human Others. Alexandra Tkacheva analyzes Anna Glazova’s poetry through a biosemiotic lens, demonstrating how the poet’s non-human figures—ranging from cephalopods to miller moths—expand the boundaries of creativity beyond the human and challenge the nature-culture binary. Klaudia Cierluk examines solastalgia—the emotional distress caused by environmental destruction—in Anna Adamowicz’s Animalia, arguing that the poet develops an alternative form of mourning that acknowledges both present and future ecological loss. Finally, Sophia Tonnessen explores the role of oil in Alexei Parshchikov’s eponymous poem, considering it as both a metaphor and an agent of cultural memory that blurs temporal boundaries.

Sub Unit

• Literature: 21st Century

Chair

• Samantha Sharp, Binghamton U

Papers

• 'Aliens from Earth': Biosemiotic Non-human Figures in Anna Glazova’s Poetr - Alexandra Tkacheva, U of Michigan

• Oil, Far as the Eye Can See: The Petropoetics of Cultural Memory in Alexei Parshchikov’s 'Neft’' - Sophia Anfinn Tonnessen, U of Michigan

• 'To Save You in a Poem, Turtle': The New Mourning in the Eco-Poetry of Anna Adamowicz - Klaudia Cierluk, Northwestern U

Discussant

• Veniamin Vadimovich Gushchin, U of Southern California