Book chapter
Phytopoetics: Human-Plant Relations and the Poiesis of Vegetal Life
The Routledge Companion to Ecopoetics, pp.117-126
Routledge, 1
2023
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Abstract
World literature features poems centering on the political, moral, aesthetic, and spiritual virtues of plant life including trees, shrubs, vines, flowers, herbs, and other botanical forms. In contemporary plant-focused poetry, however, climate disruption, biodiversity decline, and related factors have prompted a dramatic shift toward the uncertainties of species survival on a planet undergoing unparalleled change. Yet, alongside these threats to ecological vitality lies a body of empirical research into plants' capacities for behavior, communication, and intelligence. In this dynamic context, the concept of phytopoetics arises from the perspectives: poetry, praxis, and poiesis. As a botanically attentive ecopoetics, phytopoetics denotes poetic makings that focus on the botanical domain, the lives of plants, human-flora relations, and threats to biodiverse futures. Not delimited to poetry, though, phytopoetics more broadly signifies a social, cultural, psychological, or metaphysical praxis that integrates specifically vegetal modes of being. At the same time, phytopoetic work foregrounds the potential for human creativity to synchronize with the poiesis-the dynamic transformation-of plants over time, across seasons, and in places. This chapter delineates five varieties of phytopoetic practice. An Indigenous phytopoetics narrativizes First Nations' perceptions of-and interactions with-plants while works of literary ethnobotany disseminate traditional cultural, social, and spiritual understandings of vegetal life. An entheogenic poetics is written about, or after having consumed, plant-based psychotropic substances whereas an arboreal poetics remains steadfastly attuned to arboreality, forest ecologies, and human-tree interactions. The fifth variety, collaborative human-plant makings, integrates the voices of plants as sapient interlocutors exerting their own agencies, desires, and strivings.
Details
- Title
- Phytopoetics: Human-Plant Relations and the Poiesis of Vegetal Life
- Creators
- John Charles Ryan
- Contributors
- Julia Fiedorczuk (Editor)Mary Newell (Editor)Bernard Quetchenbach (Editor)Orchid Tierney (Editor)
- Publication Details
- The Routledge Companion to Ecopoetics, pp.117-126
- Publisher
- Routledge
- Edition
- 1
- Identifiers
- 991013140610002368
- Academic Unit
- Faculty of Business, Law and Arts
- Language
- English
- Resource Type
- Book chapter