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.

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“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, 2x Governor General award winner.

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The Gaagigewang Ziibi ecosystem speaks through poetry, through Sophie. Readers will be inspired to slow down, examine their environment, engage with nature, and maybe even learn a language. Perhaps inspired by this work we will all have conversations with a river, or a lake, or forest. True deep observant conversations."

– Shelley Pearen, The Manitoulin Expositor
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"Refreshing." – Kim Fahner, periodicities : a journal of poetry and poetics