Improvising Environmental Future(s) in Trans Latinx Ecopoetics

• In Event: Ecologies Beyond Empire: Improvised Presents, Sustained Futures

Abstract

Emerging queer and trans Latinx ecopoetics illustrate the material possibilities that arise from assuming an improvisational mode to navigate the quotidian infrastructures of settler racial capitalism. Focusing on the poetry of Roque Raquel Salas Rivera and Oliver Baez Bendorf, this paper explores how Latinx poets articulate trans temporality, whether of origins or of futures, through a form of anti-colonial ecopoetics. Salas Rivera and Baez Bendorf play with ecological metaphors to muse on embodiment, trans-ness, and especially, temporality (future/s, speculative origins, and decomposition). Both poets stretch our understanding of what it means to thrive in a crumbling present, and in many ways invite readers to re-orient ourselves to a “future” beyond empire. This paper considers what queer and trans Latinx ecopoetics bring to the field of environmental humanities, and especially its relationship to the future.

Author

• Moe Gámez, University of Oregon