Architects of the forest: ecopoetics of self, body and landscape

Abstract

This creative writing thesis consists of two components: a full collection of poems, and an accompanying critical study which outlines the key topics that arose in the writing of the poems. The collection is titled Architects of the Forest and is a contemporary reimagining and close viewing of the landscape of the New Forest in Hampshire, United Kingdom. It consists of sixty poems that explore themes of connecting to an adopted environment, belonging to nature, and contemporary ways of viewing beyond the mainstream normative. The collection offers a reshaping of the landscape through both an ecofeminist and disability lens. This is an exploration of responsibility and identity within nature. The critical thesis consists of three chapters that centralise ideas of self, body and place. In Chapter Two, I explore my use of technology as prosthesis which allows me entry into a nature I struggle to access, due to visual impairment. There is often the pervasive assumption that unmediated contact is the ‘right way’ to be in nature with all forms of mediated access considered of lesser value. I seek to challenge this assumption, asserting that remote viewing of nature via technology can offer a surprising experience of closeness from afar. I explore how the ‘distance’ created by my mediated contact has become an invaluable part of my creative process and demonstrate how different technologies aid in the creation of my poetry collection. In Chapter Three, I consider the intersections of body, self and place in contemporary nature poetry and argue that the disabled body has its own agency, which may obstruct ideas of personal identity. I assert that the medical gaze creates a need to limit exposure often exhibited through different modes of address. Through analysis of work by poets such as Polly Atkin, Jane Hartshorn, Hannah Hodgson and Alice Tarbuck, as well as my own poems, I explore how our bodies—as unreliable and difficult to inhabit as they may be—can help shape ideas of place. Being in nature, it appears can act as mediation and helps form a reconciliation between the sparring entities of self and body. In Chapter Four, I explore the ordering of poetry collections by what I term ‘Echo’ that is, the method of organising poetry collections through repeated words and images or finding connections between poems. I examine Gillian Clarke’s The Silence, Black Country by Liz Berry and my own collection. Echo, I assert helps embed a powerful sense of place within these place-based collections. In my own work, I explore how I recreate the New Forest not just through content and form of individual poems, but by incorporating the natural interconnected habitats of the New Forest into the ordering of my work.

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