ECOPOETRY
Meets on Mondays & Wednesdays, 12:00-1:15 p.m., KUY 409
KUMU: Noʻu Revilla, she/her/hers
EMAIL: (nrevilla@hawaii.edu)
STUDENT HOURS: Mon, 3:15-4:15pm
OFFICE: KUY 719
Course Description
Our planet is (still) alive. Yet in the face of urgent ecological crises, how humans re-examine and re-make our relationships to the physical world will determine how long we stay alive with it. In this course, we will read, write, and workshop ecopoetry. More than nature poems, ecopoetry pursues a critical consciousness of humanity’s relationship with our environments. While a product of the 21st-century, ecopoetry inherits forms and philosophies from the Romantic tradition as well as Modernism, to say nothing of the centuries of Indigenous epistemologies and aesthetics that prioritize interdependent, sustainable, and place-based models of stewardship.
To develop vocabulary for our craft, we will turn to a diverse range of writers, including Haunani-Kay Trask, Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner, Julian Aguon, Natalie Diaz, Leanne Simpson, Tommy Pico, Patricia Smith, Rajiv Mohabir, and Naomi Klein. Students in this course will produce critical and creative works that respond to the field of ecopoetry. Over the course of the semester, these works may address issues related to climate justice, disaster capitalism, cultures of consumption, war, waste, food production, monoculture farming, plastic pollution, diversion and privatization of water, the extinction of wildlife species, mass corporate tourism, and militarization. Of course, a poem about a river is not a river, and poetry can’t reverse the effects of climate change or stop a nuclear bomb. So, a framing question of our course is: what can ecopoetry do? What does it do to you? Is it just a creative practice or can it also be a way to meet the world? Can ecopoetry spur action, or at least be an entry point into difficult conversations about what humans have done to the planet (and each other)? How can ecopoetry help writers imagine and mobilize toward better futures? How might Hawaiian, Pacific, and other Indigenous poets model poetic attention as an ethic of relation? How do ecopoems negotiate witness, elegy, protest? How does ecopoetry upcycle vocabularies from colonial ecologies (sugar, tourism, drilling, pipelines) and what happens when poets refuse to reproduce these logics in their work? How do poets write with – not merely about – the environment?
Required Course Materials
In addition to a dedicated course notebook and a pen/pencil, students will most likely be required to purchase a printed course reader. Any supplemental reading will be made available as hyperlinks or PDFs. Students are responsible for downloading, reading, and bringing their readers with them to every class. I expect all students to read assigned work with intention and curiosity. Be prepared to discuss readings in class. Students are also responsible for coordinating regular access to the Internet and must understand how to navigate their hawaii.edu email accounts and our course Google folder. Check your email on a regular basis for announcements.
Major Assignments
- A chapbook of original poems. Drafts of individual poems will be submitted to the instructor over the course of the semester and subsequently workshopped and revised.
- Small-group workshops (2)
- Lead class discussion + framing document
- Short reading responses (4)
- Oral exam (midterm)
- Essay on ecopoetics (500 words)
- End-of-semester screening of original ecopoem shorts (3-8 minutes)