news | Thursday October 31, 2024

Conversations with the Kagawong River Is Here!

Hot off the press! The gorgeous debut poetry and visual art collection Conversations with the Kagawong River by sophie anne edwards is here! 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. edwards 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.

An excerpt from “December 19”:

“Increasingly my process on the River is about relationships. I am less
observer, moving more into responsiveness. … I trace the
porosity of my body and the aquatic one with which I am in relations as a
writer, walker, and someone who lives downstream, drinks the water, and
cycles her through my own household, through my body, and back into the
water table, the air, and in turn the River. I begin to shift from noun to verb.”

Order your copy of Conversations with the Kagawong River here.