“The Land was Never Some of Ours”: Sustainability and Ecopoetic Perspectives on the Future

Part Three of Our Common CAHSS: Beyond Sustainability Speaker Series

Speaker: Chris McAllister Williams is an Assistant Professor in English and Humanities at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay, also teaching in the BFA for Writing and Applied Arts. He wrote the chapbooks Neon Augury(Fact-Simile Editions) and WILLIAM SHATNER (alice blue). His work has appeared in Gulf Coast, Copper Nickel, Bayou Magazine, and elsewhere.

Description: Ecopoetics is more than just poems about nature. Rather, it is poetry that positions humankind in relationship to “the natural,” embodying the tensions between ecological landscapes and late capitalism in, as scholar Lynn Keller terms it, the “self-conscious Anthropocene.” This talk will draw upon the work of bell hooks, Craig Santos Perez, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, and others to situate the concerns of the Anthropocene—the proposed name for a new epoch when human activity is the dominant force reshaping the planet—alongside poetic approaches that seek to explore those concerns, culminating in a discussion about the interwoven nature of ecological location, sustainability, and creative responsibility that is a core focus of the field.