by
A site-specific engagement with a river ecosystem on 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. She 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.
Bridal Veil(ed) Falls
we splash wade cell- and beer-handed lift faces to spray enraptured giddy sun-reddened posts multiply
i am double visioned
see the falls see falling
we are caught up but not in god caught rupture not Rapture
sight
blindness
veiled the sun limestone solid under fingers the rushing water the rock trees
rooted to the ravine how is anything other possible
married to ghosts we cling to old vows
constant growth consummated without synaptical transference
yellow dog-toothed violet
blue crystalline breath in december dusk bejeweled caddis fly
unfurling fern, pungent leek
what production worth the gently speaking jack-in-the-pulpit
it continues
we continue
the hand becoming visible
can we be graceful
midwife the river while
accepting our own possibly necessary fall
what word worth
the weight of paper
Kate Sikloski, author of Selvege wrote:“Subversive, risk-taking, restlessly immersive, Sophie Anne Edwards’ Conversations with the Kagawong River presents an ecological practice of radical site-specific engagement. Driven by a desire to “fill language with the body,” and informed by local Anishinaabe and settler history, she brings to these encounters with the river an ontological urgency and fierce energy. Here is a bold category-crossing work to cherish and also heed.”
"The river speaks through and with Sophie Anne Edwards in Conversations with the Kagawong River. In this field study combining historiographic research, local storytelling, and gorgeous poetic experimentation, we are called to immerse ourselves and listen. Flow with the current, dig your fingers in the silt, heed the warning of its song."
