My work is attuned to the environment, but also to the importance of a located practice (in the body, on site, and cognizant of neo-colonial processes), so my writing includes text-based work that draws on archival engagement, interviews, and a range of other methods to explore the social, cultural, historical, colonial, and environmental complexities of local ecosystems. 

The work explores the limits of language and communication, and engages with the emerging (in Canada) field of geopoetics, loosely defined as a rejection of the human/other-than-human, and poetic/critical geography binaries, involving a re-connection to and examination of place through language and creativity, with a sensibility to colonial and other processes. 

In this river project, I engage creative field research to explore questions like:

• Can a different kind of poetics engage different human/nature relationships in the context of the climate crisis?

• What constitutes a valid, mutual relationship with the river -- is inter-species collaboration possible? 

• How might I interview and co-write with an ecosystem? 

• What is language and poetry, who/what constructs it?

• Is this poetry if the reader is an ecosystem? 

• Where do I situate my writing in this colonized ecosystem?

• What new forms of meaning and language can emerge through a process of not- and un-knowing?

I am grateful to the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council funding this project, as well as to the members of my Community Shared Art project (winter 2019 and 2020) who urged me on with generous and active readings. Residencies at both Hall’s Island and the Al and Eurithe Purdy A-Frame came at important junctures in the writing and my life. A number of journals published selections, including the beautiful hand-bound pamphlet by Blasted Tree, a special project with Gap Riot Press, as well as series and singles by The Capilano Review, Arc Poetry Magazine, The Pi Review, Everyone’s Talking about Strawberries, and Empty Mirror.