March 15, 2018 – EcoPoetics

Our spring ecopoetics community offering was a lightly-guided contemplative walk along the edge of UBC campus and through the trails of Pacific Spirit Park. Walking through spaces both urban and wild, we were be invited to attend to equinox’s balance and turning: to “find ourselves already home in a world thrumming with resonant meaning” (Derby, 2015, p. 9) while asking the big question of what it means to live reverently in 2018.

This event was organized by organized by a diverse team—Carl Leggo, Kedrick James, Elizabeth Torres, Amber Moore, Kyle Stooshnov and Margaret McKeon—and supported in part by the Ritsumeikan Seed Fund of UBC’s Department of Language and Literacy Education.

Our walk began with a ritual opening offered by Elizabeth Torres and two of her students at a look off over the Salish Sea.

We walked through a light industrial area at the fringe of UBC campus and mused on how composing could be thought of as composting.

The forest’s mossy limbs enfolded us as we walked for a time in silence.

“Walk me through your living patchwork and stitch me somewhere soft.”

~Amber Moore

At particular stops, planning committee members offered poems, teachings and reflections that echoed with the forest’s vibrant greenery and bird-life, ancient stumps from turn of the century logging, and forest-clearing condo construction.

the more I look, the more I see
the more I see, the more I look

I am spellbound as I spell the light in words
like a school of purposeful porpoises

full of playful propositions
for opening up poetic possibilities

~ Carl Leggo

A number of poems and reflections from this event have been shared through our blog:

Triumphal Tangent by Kyle Stooshov

Photosynthesis by Carl Leggo

Curbing the Coast Condo by Amber Moore

Walking Pacific Spirit Park by Margaret McKeon

An Invitation

We invite you to walk our route (or part of it) in your own time and join in sharing in our dialogue of ecopoetics. We invite to you attend to contrasts of wild and urban and the felt sense of different ways of attending as you walk. You might: talk, be silent, sing, stop, use (or not) a camera, go slow, faster, pause. Watch, listen, touch.

Here is the route that we walked: PacificSpiritParkMap Ecopoetics Long Walk.

Citation: Derby, M. W. (2015). Place, being, resonance: A critical ecohermeneutic approach to education. New York, NY: Peter Lang.