Tuesdays 6:30-8 pm EST, online
January 13-February 17 (6 classes)
$250.00 (sliding scale available for IBPOC participants)
The biotic world is characterized by diverse, fluid, porous, interconnected, interspecies systems. How might our writing benefit from thinking like/with/in conversation with an ecosystem? How might more-than-human elements (water, wind, willow…) intermix to form unexpected and meaningful collaborations? How might other mediums speak to, inform and transform our texts? How might our writing be less static, less linear? In this workshop, artists and writers of all experience levels are invited to experiment. We’ll wade into the porosity of language, the fluid boundaries between image and text. We’ll explore how different mediums speak to and through each other. This workshop aims to loosen our writing, while inviting us to engage differently with the biotic world by spending time with it/her/them.
Bio: Sophie Anne Edwards’ environmental poetry – visual poems, video poems and text-based work – has been published by Gap Riot, Blasted Tree, and Jack Pine Presses, as well as by a range of literary magazines across Canada. Her full-length book of hybrid/experimental environmental poetry — Conversations with the Kagawong River (Talonbooks) was a CBC and Quill & Quire anticipated read.
“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 winner
“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, co-publisher Gap Riot Press
She’s also written/edited three non-fiction books about land-based creative community engagement and research. She has been longlisted for the CBC Poetry Prize, and shortlisted for Arc Magazine Poem of the Year. As the founding AD/ED of 4elements Living Arts she curated, designed and led dozens of environmental arts projects, including Elemental Festival and The Connections Trail (which won an Ontario Lieutenant Governor Award for Cultural Landscape Heritage Preservation). She is a member of the Indigenous Relations Committee of the Escarpment Biosphere Conservancy, and the Artist in Residence for ECCCo (Early Childhood Creative Collaborations). She has a Certificate in Creative Writing from Humber College and has attended writing residencies with the Banff Centre for the Arts, Sage Hill, and the Al Purdy A-Frame.
Image credit: Image by rawpixel.com on Freepik with my alphabet riffs.
Chamomile (anthemis nobilis) illustration from medical botany (1836)
Tuesdays 6:30-8 pm EST, online
January 13-February 17 (6 classes)
$250.00 (sliding scale available for IBPOC participants)
The biotic world is characterized by diverse, fluid, porous, interconnected, interspecies systems. How might our writing benefit from thinking like/with/in conversation with an ecosystem? How might more-than-human elements (water, wind, willow…) intermix to form unexpected and meaningful collaborations? How might other mediums speak to, inform and transform our texts? How might our writing be less static, less linear? In this workshop, artists and writers of all experience levels are invited to experiment. We’ll wade into the porosity of language, the fluid boundaries between image and text. We’ll explore how different mediums speak to and through each other. This workshop aims to loosen our writing, while inviting us to engage differently with the biotic world by spending time with it/her/them.
Bio: Sophie Anne Edwards’ environmental poetry – visual poems, video poems and text-based work – has been published by Gap Riot, Blasted Tree, and Jack Pine Presses, as well as by a range of literary magazines across Canada. Her full-length book of hybrid/experimental environmental poetry — Conversations with the Kagawong River (Talonbooks) was a CBC and Quill & Quire anticipated read.
“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 winner
“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, co-publisher Gap Riot Press
She’s also written/edited three non-fiction books about land-based creative community engagement and research. She has been longlisted for the CBC Poetry Prize, and shortlisted for Arc Magazine Poem of the Year. As the founding AD/ED of 4elements Living Arts she curated, designed and led dozens of environmental arts projects, including Elemental Festival and The Connections Trail (which won an Ontario Lieutenant Governor Award for Cultural Landscape Heritage Preservation). She is a member of the Indigenous Relations Committee of the Escarpment Biosphere Conservancy, and the Artist in Residence for ECCCo (Early Childhood Creative Collaborations). She has a Certificate in Creative Writing from Humber College and has attended writing residencies with the Banff Centre for the Arts, Sage Hill, and the Al Purdy A-Frame.
Image credit: Image by rawpixel.com on Freepik with my alphabet riffs.
Chamomile (anthemis nobilis) illustration from medical botany (1836)
