Poetics of the More-than-Human World

A call for poems, hybrid work, and brief manifestos on ecopoetics, for a special issue of Dispatches to be released in Spring 2020.

We are also interested in reviews of relevant work, critical appraisals, and audio-video work, but query first to ecopoetics2020@gmail.com. Mary Newell and Bernard Quetchenbach are co-editing this issue, which will lead to a print anthology.

Send your text submission by January 1, 2020 to ECOPOETICS2020. 

Send videos to David Rothenberg, our media curator, at terranova@highlands.com.

The term “Ecopoetics” loosely describes creative writing that reflects the complex interrelationships within the ever-shifting, endangered ecosphere. In this anthropocene epoch, many acknowledge that “nature” and “culture” are inextricably interwoven. Ecopoetics, then, does not address “nature” as an object for perception or appropriation but as the sea in which we swim or drown, with countless others. Such poetry can be experimental in shape, point of view (such as attempts at decentering the human perspective), and/ or syntax. To open questions or startle readers out of inertia may have more impact than conventional advocacy.

Some possible topics within this broad umbrella are listed below:

• Anthropocene
• Interspecies encounters: writing of/as another species, multi-species vocalizations, queries about how to speak for or about natural “others”
• Cultural, scientific, or indigenous perspectives on the relationship between human, nonhuman, and physical elements of the ecosystem
• Scalar effects and dissonances [e.g., Timothy Clark notes that “what is self-evident or rational at one scale may be destructive or unjust at another”]
• Timescales: Geological or other perspectives involving deep time and/ or deep space: global, intergalactic
• Witness to ecological disasters or remediations
• Investigations of climate change and social justice issues
• Eco-apocalyptic scenarios
• Art/nature intersections
• Place: inhabitation, displacement, virtual spaces, reconsideration of “belonging”
• The role of language – what syntax, diction, structures can do to honor the interconnectedness of the biota, challenge our perceptions, produce a needed shock to action etc.

Please submit your work in .doc, .docx, or pdf format, in Times New Roman 12 or similar type size, except for special formatting. Use pdf to preserve any special formatting. Include a short bio.

Send your submission by January 1, 2020 to ECOPOETICS2020.  In case this link is not live in the copy you receive, the address for submissions is <https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1tA1Usvw1NtvLCwhmn6MmXLySWGNkacMgEkToAotUYFs/viewform?edit_requested=true&pli=1>.  If you do not have a Google account, please email your submission to ecopoetics2020@gmail.com.

All submissions will be reviewed by our panel of editors.