what is ecopoetics workshop?
ecopoetics workshop is a collaborative, nomadic residency program that gathers diverse and interdisciplinary groups of artists, poets, scholars, and scientists to think and make artwork together. We take collaboration as inherently ecological, and individualist thinking as one of the climate crisis’s main causes. We aim to open spaces for creatives to embark together on new artistic, conceptual, and creatively critical projects at the nexus of poetics and ecology.
Our primary mode is two-week residency programs that take place onsite at ecologically rich locations. We develop and organize content such as reading lists, interactive seminars, dynamic exercises, talks from experts, and showcases for local communities.
how do we define ecopoetics?
It is our evolving aim to apply the insights of ecology to poetics, and poetics to ecology, in a topological twist of research and practice. Hence, for us ecopoetics signifies a non-teleological and non-deterministic open-ended helix of research activity and aesthetic practice, with the understanding that the two are inevitably enmeshed, just like environments are ongoing relational creations. We hope to function as something like an ineffable chemical catalyst on staid conventions, opening space for ecopoetics itself to evolve into something not just concerned with “environmental issues” (though it is surely that), but an approach to art-making, poetics, and research that is itself “ecological,” (i.e. relational, entangled, unfinished, transforming & transformational).
who is ecopoetics workshop?
Brooke Bastie holds a Ph.D. in English from the University at Buffalo. Her academic work focuses on contemporary Indigenous and Latinx poetry, especially at the intersections of language, law, and land. She is the assistant managing editor at essay press and co-editor at col-, a journal that emphasizes collaboration.
Brent Cox earned a PhD from the University at Buffalo's Poetics Program, and an MFA in Poetry and Poetics from University of Washington, Bothell. He is a co-founder of Ecopoetics Workshop and editor of the Topological Poetics Research Institute (TPRI), an experiment in publishing. He is a poet and multimedia artist, and his academic work focuses on experimental critical approaches and formal innovation. His work has been published in OEI, &&&: Triple Ampersand, and PQ, and presented at DocTalksxMoMa.
Courtlin Byrd is a filmmaker and media artist. Her work has been shown at New Filmmakers New York, Public Works Administration, and The Film and Video Poetry Symposium, and has been published in Moving Image Artists, OEI, and Venti. She is a co-founder of Ecopoetics Workshop. Her films and videos utilize found footage, word play, and associative editing to consider themes of cultural consumption, existentialism, and desire. IShe is a Media Study PhD candidate at the University at Buffalo.
Simon Eales has a PhD from the Poetics Program at the University at Buffalo, New York. His academic work focuses on modern and contemporary poetry and poetics, theatre and performance studies, literary theory, colonialism, and sexuality. He is the co-founder of Ecopoetics Workshop, the Georges Bataille reading group, and Buried Text podcast. He is from Melbourne, Australia and works as a ritual artist and poet. He has published critical writing in the Cambridge History of Australian Poetry, Cordite Poetry Review, The Music, and other venues.