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Final Printing Special
This is the final printing of Learning the Land. Once the remaining copies are sold, this title will not be reprinted.
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.
Launch special: 10% off. Customers may order up to 10 copies through this listing. For orders of 11 or more books, including mixed-title and institutional orders, please visit the Bulk, Institutional Procurement & Team Orders page.
Tracked shipping is calculated at checkout. Orders shipped outside Canada are not subject to Canadian sales tax. Any applicable duties, import taxes, or customs fees are the recipient’s responsibility.
Thank you for ordering from me directly — this ensures that the author/editor receives a royalty.
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
Building on her beloved series, The Art of Land-based Early Learning, Sophie Edwards invites us to consider an expanded notion of care. Care, she writes, invites us to pay attention, to heed. Meaning ‘cure’ and ‘protect’, care also comes from the Old English word for ‘sorrow’. While our care for the earth may be entwined with grief, care provides pathways through these challenging times we face. This thought-provoking book will inspire anyone who works and learns alongside children. Filled with prompts, wonderings and other queries, each chapter offers invitations to deepen our listening, build ‘relational muscle,’ embrace children’s love for Earth, and understand ecologies as communities of living, agential beings. Trees, birds, critters, water, mud, clay, and charcoal all make their appearance within these pages, inspiring us to follow, listen to, and learn from and with them, and in the process enact care.
“This beautiful book expands our notion of what it means to care for the ecologies we inhabit and deepens our understanding of why this is so important and relevant for children and those who care for them.” Sharon Speir, Superintendent of Early Learning, retired
“Once again, Sophie has given us a book that exemplifies the importance of children and educators being truly immersed in nature and becoming more attuned to the wisdom and learning found at the thresholds of our centres and classrooms, even in the smallest patch of tall grass.” Julie Kelly, Early Learning Kindergarten Educator
“Sophie’s work transforms my thinking and knowing. She asks worthy, lingering kinds of questions that we should be offering in dialogue with children, educators – and all humans. This book is a unique pathway, a living guide, a generative space where many ideas can come to live.” Kathy Boelsma, Early Years Pedagogical Collaborator
Launch special: 10% off. Customers may order up to 10 copies through this listing. For orders of 11 or more books, including mixed-title and institutional orders, please visit the Bulk, Institutional Procurement & Team Orders page.
Tracked shipping is calculated at checkout. Orders shipped outside Canada are not subject to Canadian sales tax. Any applicable duties, import taxes, or customs fees are the recipient’s responsibility.
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.
Launch special: 10% off. Customers may order up to 10 copies through this listing. For orders of 11 or more books, including mixed-title and institutional orders, please visit the Bulk, Institutional Procurement & Team Orders page.
Tracked shipping is calculated at checkout. Orders shipped outside Canada are not subject to Canadian sales tax. Any applicable duties, import taxes, or customs fees are the recipient’s responsibility.
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).
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)
Launch special: 10% off. Customers may order up to 10 copies through this listing. For orders of 11 or more books, including mixed-title and institutional orders, please visit the Bulk, Institutional Procurement & Team Orders page.
Tracked shipping is calculated at checkout. Orders shipped outside Canada are not subject to Canadian sales tax. Any applicable duties, import taxes, or customs fees are the recipient’s responsibility.
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.
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…
CONVERSATIONS WITH A RIVER
This durational project positions the Kagawong River as an active agent in her 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. ”