Abstract

This research-creation project considers how the creation of sympoietic place-based ecopoetry can help nurture kincentric relationships with non-human and more-than-human beings in Montreal’s Old Port. The sympoietic place-based ecopoems that I wrote throughout this process—wayward (45.501506, -73.552840), wildfire season (45.511746, -73.546049), and rivered (45.499305, -73.552108 & 45.497048, -73.551593)—call my human relationship with place into question and articulate the loss and destruction of the St. Lawrence waterway and their multispecies relationships. I undertook this research in response to the overwhelming pollution of the St. Lawrence waterway and out of a desire to spend time listening to and being with the waterway. My research-creation process involved taking fieldnotes at four sites within the Old Port and actualizing Robin Wall Kimmerer’s grammar of animacy through their translation/transformation into sympoietic place-based ecopoems.