Email this article DECENTRING THE HUMAN, IMAGINING THE MORE-THAN-HUMAN (Poetry, Plants, and the New England Region of Australia)
Abstract
Located in the state of New South Wales, Australia, the Northern Tablelands bioregion is a high plateau landscape unique for its geological, faunal, and floristic variety. Known widely as the New England of Australia, the Tablelands is “a strange, almost inverted landscape” of undulating plains aside steep chasms. This article analyzes poetry about the flora of the New England Tablelands region of New South Wales, Australia. The article focuses on the importance of plants and poetry to the biocultural heritage of Australia. The research objective was to understand the natural and cultural dimensions of Tablelands plants as expressed in poetry. The research involved visiting botanical communities, examining historical documents, interviewing conservationists, and writing poetry. The results suggest that poetry encourages engagement with, and respect for, human and more-than-human life. The article concludes that, in the Anthropocene age, environmental poetry is essential to environmental ethics.
Keywords: poetry, ecopoetics, plants, New England Tablelands, Australia
MEMULIAKAN MANUSIA, IMAJINASI MELEBIHI BATAS KEMANUSIAAN(Puisi, Tanaman, dan Wilayah New England Australia)
Abstrak
Terletak di negara bagian New South Wales, Australia, bioregion Tablelands Utara adalah lanskap dataran tinggi yang unik karena keanekaragaman geologis, fauna, dan floristiknya. Dikenal luas sebagai New England of Australia, Tablelands adalah "pemandangan aneh, lanskap yang hampir terbalik" dari dataran bergelombang dan jurang yang curam. Artikel ini menganalisis puisi tentang flora wilayah New England Tablelands di New South Wales, Australia. Artikel ini berfokus pada pentingnya tanaman bagi warisan biokultural Australia. Tujuan penelitian adalah untuk memahami dimensi alami dan budaya tanaman Tablelands seperti yang diungkapkan dalam puisi. Penelitian ini melibatkan mengunjungi komunitas botani; memeriksa dokumen sejarah; mewawancarai konservasionis; dan menulis puisi. Hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa puisi mendorong keterlibatan dengan, dan menghormati, kehidupan manusia dan lebih dari-manusia. Artikel itu menyimpulkan bahwa, di zaman Anthropocene, puisi lingkungan sangat penting bagi etika lingkungan.
Kata kunci: puisi, ekopuisi, tanaman, New England Tablelands, Australia
Full Text:
PDFReferences
Butzer, K., & Helgren, D. (2005). Livestock, Land Cover, and Environmental History: The Tablelands of New South Wales, Australia, 1820–1920. The Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 95(1), 80–111. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8306.2005.00451.x.
Caplow, F., & Cohen, S. (Eds.). (2010). Wildbranch: An Anthology of Nature, Environmental and Place-Based Writing. Salt Lake City, UT: University of Utah Press.
Chamovitz, D. (2013). What a Plant Knows: A Field Guide to the Senses. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Clarke, Philip A. (2007). Aboriginal People and Their Plants. Kenthurst, NSW: Rosenberg Publishing.
Commonwealth of Australia. (2018). Hakea fraseri — Gnarled Corkbark, Fraser's Hakea. Species Profile and Threats Database, 2018 (April 30). www.environment.gov.au/cgi-bin/sprat/public/publicspecies.pl?taxon_id=16093.
Dunn, I., & Sahukar, R. (2003). The New England Tableland Bioregion. In I. Dunn & R. Sahukar (eds.). The Bioregions of New South Wales: Their Biodiversity, Conservation and History. Hurstville, NSW: National Parks and Wildlife Service.
Ensor, S. (2018). The Ecopoetics of Contact: Touching, Cruising, Gleaning. ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment, 25(1), 150–168. DOI: 10.1093/isle/isy011.
Hartigan, J. (2017). Care of the Species: Races of Corn and the Science of Plant Biodiversity. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
Haworth, R. (2006). The Rocks Beneath. In A. Atkinson, J. S. Ryan, & I. Davidson (eds.). High Lean Country: Land, People and Memory in New England. Sydney: Allen & Unwin.
Huebert, D. (2018). The Equine Erotopoetics of Linda Hogan and Joy Harjo. ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment, 25(1), 169–185. DOI: 10.1093/isle/isy012.
Hume, A., & Osborne, G. (2018). Ecopoetics as Expanded Critical Practice: An Introduction. In A. Hume & G. Osborne (eds.), Ecopoetics: Essays in the Field. Iowa City, IA: University of Iowa Press.
Hume, A., & Rahimtoola, S. (2018). Introduction: Queering Ecopoetics. ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment, 25(1), 134–149. DOI: 10.1093/isle/isy014.
Keller, L. (2018a). Making Art 'Under These Apo-Calypso Rays': Crisis, Apocalypse, and Contemporary Ecopoetics. In A. Hume & G. Osborne (eds.). Ecopoetics: Essays in the Field. Iowa City, IA: University of Iowa Press.
Keller, L. (2018b). Recomposing Ecopoetics: North American Poetry of the Self-Conscious Anthropocene. Charlotesville, VA: University of Virginia Press.
Keogh, L. (2011). Duboisia Pituri: A Natural History. Historical Records of Australian Science 22 (2), 199–214. doi: 10.1071/HR11008.
Killingsworth, J. (2010). Walt Whitman and the Earth: A Study in Ecopoetics. Iowa City, IA: University of Iowa Press.
Oilier, C. D. (1982). The Great Escarpment of Eastern Australia: Tectonic and Geomorphic Significance. Journal of the Geological Society of Australia, 29(1-2), 13–23. doi:10.1080/00167618208729190
Oxley, J. (1964). Journals of Two Expeditions into the Interior of New South Wales. Adelaide: Libraries Board of South Australia.
Ryan, J. C. (2012). Green Sense: The Aesthetics of Plants, Place, and Language. Oxford: TrueHeart.
Ryan, J. C. (2017). Plants in Contemporary Poetry: Ecocriticism and the Botanical Imagination. New York: Routledge.
Sampson, F., & Hunt, C. (2006). Writing: Self and Reflexivity (3 ed.). Houndsmills, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.
Seymour, N. (2018). Bad Environmentalism: Irony and Irreverence in the Ecological Age. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
Skinner, J. (2018). Visceral Ecopoetics in Charles Olson and Michael McClure: Proprioception, Biology, and the Writing Body. In A. Hume & G. Osborne (eds.). Ecopoetics: Essays in the Field. Iowa City, IA: University of Iowa Press.
Smith, H., & Dean, R. (2009). Practice-led Research, Research-led Practice: Towards the Iterative Cyclic Web. In R. Dean & H. Smith (eds.). Practice-Led Research, Research-Led Practice in the Creative Arts. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Wallace, A. (1993). Walking, Literature and English Culture: The Origins and Uses of Peripatetic in the Nineteenth Century. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Wright, P. (1991). The NPA Guide to the National Parks of Northern New South Wales: Including State Recreation Areas. Woolloomooloo, NSW: National Parks Association of NSW.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.21831/ltr.v19i2.33441
Refbacks
- There are currently no refbacks.
______________________
__________________________________________________________________________________________________
Litera Journal is published by the Faculty of Languages, Arts, and Culture Universitas Negeri Yogyakarta in collaboration with Himpunan Sarjana Kesusasteraan Indonesia (HISKI)
The International Journal of Linguistic, Literature, and Its Teaching at http://http://journal.uny.ac.id/index.php/litera/ is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License
__________________________________________________________________________________________________