Writing like an ecosystem: a late winter workshop

Tuesdays 6:30-8 pm EST, online

April 9 - May 14 (6 classes)

$120.00 (sliding scale available for IBPOC participants)

The biotic world is characterized by diverse, fluid, porous, interspecies systems. How might our writing benefit from thinking like 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 can our writing be less static, less linear? In this fun 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. Participants will explore a range of prompts in a park, on a shoreline, along a trail wherever they live. We’ll share our reflections and creations in each virtual class.

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. In addition to a full-length book of hybrid/experimental environmental poetry which is forthcoming with Talon Books, fall 2024, she’s 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)