This novel visually and narratively lives within the footnotes. The dominant story — of the husband, the abuser — is erased, visually blank apart from a few irruptions that invade the white space above the footnotes.
Trying to establish stability and meaning, a woman gathers and unravels a litany of distances, measurements, checks and balances. Sounds and scents are mixed in a form of post-traumatic synesthesia. Time is collapsed into a basket of humming vowels.
The typical function of the footnote as a reference bringing the reader toward deeper understanding of the main text is subverted. The narrator inserts herself in its spaces, while the reliability of the footnote and of its narrator become increasingly unstable. Her tangling and untangling narrative shifts back and forth as memories intrude on her day-to-day domestic tasks. The narrative becomes increasingly fragmentary, coalescing with the sound of a gunshot as a hunter takes down a deer.
This is a book for readers who love language, experiments with form, and a character they can get behind.
A site-specific engagement with an ecosystem of Mnidoo Mnising (Manitoulin Island), Conversations with the Kagawong River raises the possibility of collaboration with the more-than-human. The author spent several years learning to listen to the Gaagigewang Ziibi (Kagawong River) and to follow the rhythms and patterns of its flora and fauna, the weather and the water. She invited the participation of various collaborators – woodpeckers, otters, currents, ice, grasses. The resulting poems, supported by local Elders, language speakers, and historians, make visible the colonial, environmental, and social processes that construct an ecosystem and (settler) relationships to it.
“Subversive, risk-taking, restlessly immersive, Sophie Anne Edwards’ Conversations with the Kagawong River presents an ecological practice of radical site-specific engagement. Driven by a desire to “fill language with the body,” and informed by local Anishinaabe and settler history, she brings to these encounters with the river an ontological urgency and fierce energy. Here is a bold category-crossing work to cherish and also heed.” Don McKay, poet, Governor General award winner
Included on CBC Books and Quill & Quire most anticipated release lists! This beautiful full colour book invites the reader to spend time on the River.
$24.95, 208 pages, full colour, photography, poetry, reflection
Available through:
Independent booksellers across Canada
Direct through me in person on Manitoulin, or shipped by me
In this book you will learn about my vision as an independent artist prior to 4elements Living Arts becoming incorporated in 2009; projects I did in collaboration with 4e; and all those I co/designed and curated in my role as the founding artistic director of the organization. The book documents diverse community projects that have engaged participants of all ages: on trails, in community halls, at schools, at lakeshore beaches, partnering with numerous organizations and volunteers to bring creative perspectives for learning about communities and ecosystems. The book offers ideas and suggestions for ways to instigate shared creative inquiries, and creative engagements to explore your town or local ecosystems + landscapes, and see familiar places in new ways every day! (158 pages).
Preview here.
NOTE: Please select 1-4 copies, then purchase the shipping. Canadian shipping and handling is $28 for four books (any four of the Art of Land based Early Learning and the Learning the Land books) using Canada Post flat rate boxes. ** The book is currently on back order; expect approximately 3 weeks for delivery.
For bulk and International orders please contact me to arrange shipping.
Thank you for ordering from me directly — this ensures that the author/editor receives a royalty.
In this volume, we document and share our experiences with natural art materials and the emergence of ecological relationships through hands-on creative engagement with children in classrooms and outdoor environments. Clay, fibre, natural dyeing, charcoal and earth pigments are all featured. (144 pages)
NOTE: Please select 1-4 copies, then purchase the shipping. Canadian shipping and handling is $28 for four books (any four of the Art of Land based Early Learning and the Learning the Land books) using Canada Post flat rate boxes.
For bulk and International orders please contact me to arrange shipping.
Thank you for ordering from me directly — this ensures that the author/editor receives a royalty (the publisher, 4elements does not pay out writer royalties).
Preview pages here.
In this volume we share children’s and educators’ experiences as we learn together through art-making: about ourselves and our human and ecological communities in the process. We provide insight on the role of art making and the focused attention of the creative process to build capacities in observation & reflection that are key to art and science learning, at all ages. Includes drawing, stitching, land-art, creative mapping, and more. (184 pages)
Preview pages here.
NOTE: Please select 1-4 copies, then purchase the shipping. Canadian shipping and handling is $28 for four books (any four of the Art of Land based Early Learning and the Learning the Land books) using Canada Post flat rate boxes.
For bulk and International orders please contact me to arrange shipping.
Thank you for ordering from me directly — this ensures that the author/editor receives a royalty (the publisher, 4elements does not pay out writer royalties).
About
sophie anne edwards (she/her/settler) is an environmental artist, geopoet and curator of English and French descent based on Mnidoo Mnising (Manitoulin Island), northeastern Ontario. A geographer (SSHRC funded, PhD Candidate, Queen’s U) she is interested in the spatial imaginary, geopoetics, creative field research, and the possibilities of interspecies collaboration.
Book Reviews
“The river speaks through and with Sophie Anne Edwards in Conversations with the Kagawong River. In this field study combining historiographic research, local storytelling, and gorgeous poetic experimentation, we are called to immerse ourselves and listen. Flow with the current, dig your fingers in the silt, heed the warning of its song.”
— Kate Sikloski, author of Selvege
“Subversive, risk-taking, restlessly immersive, Sophie Anne Edwards’ Conversations with the Kagawong River presents an ecological practice of radical site-specific engagement. Driven by a desire to “fill language with the body,” and informed by local Anishinaabe and settler history, she brings to these encounters with the river an ontological urgency and fierce energy. Here is a bold category-crossing work to cherish and also heed.”
— Don McKay, poet, Governor General winner
”As a settler and ally Sophie has written a creative and meaningful book that … grapples with a decolonial approach to writing about, and with, place … sometimes creativity and art reach places where words — particularly English ones — can’t. “
— Dr. Alan Ojiig Corbiere, M’Chigeeng First Nation/York U
Interviews and Publications
PI REVIEW: SHIFTING BASELINE
MINI POETRY INTERVIEWS
ARC POETRY: INTERVIEW WITH A SPAWNING SALMON ON THE KAGAWONG RIVER
EMPTY MIRROR: ICE POEMS
TALKING ABOUT STRAWBERRIES ALL OF THE TIME: ART OF WRITING
TALKING ABOUT STRAWBERRIES ALL OF THE TIME: INTERVIEW WITH DEER TRACKS AND A STAND OF CEDARS
MY (SMALL PRESS) WRITING DAY: A WRITING DAY
H&: 150 INTRODUCED SPECIES
H&: WINDOW POEM
RIPARIAN
CBC: Manitoulin poet has one of Quill & Quire's most anticipated fall releases
Portfolio
INEFFECTUAL INTERSPECIES PROTECTION
This project is also a way to breathe through grief: that associated with climate change, and the PTSD I experience as a…
INTERVIEW WITH A RIVER
This durational project positions the Kagawong River as an active agent in its own telling. Interviewees and other correspondents include a range of
PATHWAYS PROJECT
PADDLE LAB
THE DRAWING BOX
RIVER SCHOOL AND COMMUNITY HOOP PROJECT
THE FIELDBOOK PROJECT
THE JAMESON INQUIRY
ELEMENTAL FESTIVAL
TELLING TRAILS
TELLING STORIES ABOUT PLACE
THE ART OF BEING BILLINGS
MOVEMENT MANITOULIN AND PARAPHRASE
THE BONNIE BLINK PROJECT
STONE INQUIRIES
Reggio / Inquiry based early learning
your silence is a world for my language
COMMUNITY SCULPTURE
Testimonials
“I really enjoy Sophie’s [early learning] books because they remind me that our land is full of discoveries, and about the importance of returning borrowed items back.”
— Jenn Rowe
"Sophie is a phenomenal, kind-hearted and versatile coach that gives great guidance and training to whomever she crosses paths with."
— Shelba Deer, (Red Turtle Woman, Seed Starting to Break Open Women)
”Sophie’s deep passion and commitment to ecology and the natural world is evident in her ongoing work with children and educators. She has been an awakening to my relationship and connection to the land. ”