Why All Poetics Must Ultimately be Considered as Geopoetics

On 18th January 2022 we welcomed Oliver Dawson, a final year PhD student at University of Bristol, to Landscape Surgery. Oliver’s thesis, titled “Poetic Cartographies and Ecosophic Thought” focuses on poetry as a process of encountering non-human forces which operate within this world, disrupting its obvious and performative imagination of worlds.

About

After finishing his Undergraduate degree in American Literature at the University of Sussex, Oliver began working in the arts and cultural sector and ran The Poetry School, an organisation based in London which provides poetry writing classes for adults. Through this organisation, Oliver was introduced to a range of poets and began to explore the contemporary poetry scene in the UK. The organisation saw people from all walks of life engage with poetry, many of whom went on to publish their work and return to teach at the The Poetry School.

Oliver went on to study an MSc in Human Geography: Society and Space at the University of Bristol where the university’s strong philosophical roots influenced his approach to poetry. Through his exposure to the works of thinkers such as Spinoza, Deleuze and Guattari, Oliver began to approach poetry as an encounter with impersonal forces and sensations.

Research and Influences

Whilst Oliver did not set out his career as a ‘geographer’ he states that he is on a journey to become a geographer. The combination of his studies, work and research have situated his research within cultural and historical geography, with a particular interest in geopoetics.

“Geography is not confined to providing historical form with a substance and variable places. It is not merely physical and human but mental, like the landscape” – Deleuze & Guattari 1994: 96

Guattari has had significant influence on Oliver’s research; his thesis aims to enact a certain ecosophic thought traditionally associated with Guattari, focusing on the combined importance of mental, social, and environmental domains in the production of subjectivity.

Deleuze & Guattari. Image Source: https://bit.ly/DeleuzeGuattari

Ecosophic thought centres on how thinking these domains together actively composes a ‘wisdom of the home’. Oliver talked us through the understanding processes and productions of subjectivity as more than human, as a process which always involves non-human forces and therefore can be seen as a way of “thinking with the earth”.

“Something in the world forces us to think. This something is an object not of recognition but of a fundamental encounter.” – Deleuz, 1998

Oliver’s research aim therefore, is to think of poetry as an operational part of this world, as opposed to a commentary of the world. “Once poetry is a commentary it is a representation and confirmation of existing thoughts and ideas, the realities of what we already know”. Discussing the climate emergency, he argues that geopoetics should be less attached to commenting and responding to preconceived problems. Instead we should use geopoetics as a way of thinking with the earth when addressing realities such as the climate emergency. Oliver states that he has resisted engaging with ‘obvious’ poetry within his field such as eco-poetry, in doing so he establishes the challenges of geopoetics as not thinking from the self but instead thinking with the forces of the earth, deterritorialising the language used by thinking without a ground or foundation. By removing the ‘ground’, poetry and language have the potential to connect with the changes and movements of the earth.

His research reveals an interest in the relation of poetry and language, and understanding language as a system which covets order. In his attempt to address the asignifying side of language, Oliver draws on the disruption to order, by assigning events with poetry as ‘sites of disruption’ for performative ways of thinking. This has influenced his research methodology whereby he takes onboard the experience of meeting a poet, reading their work as well as the work which has influenced them, and then introducing his own philosophy. This method allows Oliver to be alert to the potential eruption of ideas by letting things emerge through the encounter, disrupting habitual patterns of thought and altering the production of subjectivity in novel, unpredictable ways.

Oliver sees geopoetics as a field he would like to explore further, potentially through the publication of a book. He is particularly interested in further exploring the meaning within the ‘geo’ and how his approach to poetry can act as a contribution to geopoetics as a whole.

We would like to thank Oliver for sharing with us his thought-provoking research and look forward to seeing his further exploration of geopoetics.

By Evie Gilbert

DELEUZE, G. & GUATTARI, F. 1994. What is philosophy?, New York, Columbia University Press.

Plumbing a vertical path through the planet – Social and Cultural Geography responses to the climate crisis

NOAA-19 S 75W 2021-07-20 12-18 GMT pristine from NOAA APT 1.3.0.png
NOAA-19, London, 20 July 2020, 12:18 GMT
Source: open-weather CC BY 4.0

What happens in the Arctic does not stay in the Arctic. The region is warming three times faster than the global average and staying within 1.5 degrees temperature increase has been top of the news agenda. To coincide with COP 26 in Glasgow, Landscape Surgery showcased three projects that capture responses to the climate crisis; from China, from the depths of an underwater cave and from outer space.

Liling Xu, a historian in the third year of her PhD at Royal Holloway, has been tracking China’s national security policies alongside accelerating climate change impacts. China has been experiencing increasing numbers of extreme weather events, threats to food security and other emergencies. A central focus of Xu’s work has been to investigate if, and how priorities have changed in China since the United Nation Security Council‘s first debate on the impact of global warming on global peace and security.

China became an observer in the Arctic Council in 2013 and as part of her research Xu has been looking for the “missing link” which connects China’s national security policies to more frequent climate impacts. Early policy papers use vague wording, “affects” and “impacts”, to refer to extreme weather events in parts of China.

China has significant interests in the Arctic. The shipping routes through the Northwest Passage are like a Polar Silk Road. Nevertheless, even in 2018 a policy paper outlining those concerns used slippery language when mentioning threats to national security due to the impacts resulting from global warming, says Xu.

Images such as the vertical map visualise China’s positioning as a growing economic powerhouse. Europe is represented as an outpost, squashed up at the top of the world while China opens out to a vast and ice free Arctic, criss crossed with shipping lanes that reduce the distance between the markets of the East and the rest of the world.

A Chinese ‘vertical world map,’ showing the world in a different perspective from the Eurocentric view that has mostly dominated cartography. Credit: Prior Probablity.

Shifting away from the Arctic and geopolitical narratives of the climate crisis, the next presentation plunged us deep underwater. An ongoing collaboration between artist Flora Parrott and writer Lindiwe Matshikiza centres a moment of encounter between a cave diver and a previously unknown species of cave fish, which has seemingly adapted itself from a surface dwelling species of loach. In the video, we follow the dim light of the divers as they swim deeper into the cave system. In those murky underground habitats, different imaginaries emerge as humans find themselves surviving only by means of technology and scuba skills. Perhaps when we emerge again at the surface we find our reflections bubble with new ideas and a rethinking of human relationships to environments.

Listen

Soaring upwards once again, this time beyond land and sky, and into space, Sasha Engelmann let us into a secret… It’s not that hard to photograph space…. With a bit of know how and a radio antenna, Open-Weather (Sophie Dyer and Sasha Engelmann) alongside Rectangle (Lizzie Malcolm and Daniel Powers), created a global network of citizen-artists to collectively image earth.

‘When I image the earth, I imagine another‘ is a global weather report made up of snapshots taken by people engaging in the project from all over the world. Operating DIY satellite ground stations, citizen-artists from Buenos Aires to Abu Dhabi captured a collective snapshot of the Earth and its weather systems: a ‘nowcast’ for an undecided future.

On the eve of COP26 (October 31st 2021), tuning into transmissions from three orbiting National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) satellites, members of the network captured their images and submitted their fieldnotes. Combined, these contributions generate a polyperspectival (from many angles) image of the earth as experienced from Japan, Mauritius, Los Angeles and countless other locations.

Satellites transmit in analogue and the signal can be encoded mechanically into a radio wave. The radio environment can interrupt the signal and Engelmann described how the movements of the photographers were inscribed in the images. Swirls and patterns from multiple perspectives and many situated positions, helped to close up the gap between a detached and politicised understanding of the climate crisis and the everyday experiences of people. Weather fronts forming far away, at the edge of earth entwined with the familiar, intimate experience of someone in their balcony, arm outstretched and holding a radio antenna.

A participant in Glasgow captured an image of a cyclone passing over the city and their field notes describe the moment in time when they took the picture. The artwork is a feminist experiment in imaging and reimagining the planet in an era of climate crisis and, I think, a collection of images and words that spark enchantment and hope.

More about ‘When I image the earth, I imagine another‘ here

Written by Viveca Mellegård

Edited by Evie Gilbert

More information on; China’s geopolitical imaginations of the Arctic, explorations into how climate change has been embedded into China’s imaginations, representations and practices in foreign policy, academic research, popular culture and domestic tourism:

• Portrait of the week: Zhai Mo
• Article on Chinese painter-sailor Zhai Mo to circumvent the arctic, non-stop
• Article on how a Chinese Sailboat Became a Microcosm for Arctic Geopolitics

AAG Dry Run: Miriam Burke, Pip Thornton and Simon Cook

On a (finally slightly more spring-than-winter-like!) afternoon, the Landscape Surgery group gathered at Bedford Square to hear early versions of some of the papers being presented by group members at this year’s AAG Annual Meeting in Boston. We heard from Miriam Burke and Pip Thornton (pictured left), who delivered fascinating material; whilst Simon Cook, who was unfortunately unable to make the session, offered his apologies, but also had some fascinating material to share.

Miriam, Pip and Simon are also convening sessions at the AAG – below are both the summaries of their papers, and the description of the sessions they are convening.

 

Miriam Burke

Paper Title: Threads, ties and tangles: exploring the idea of ‘more than human’ social reproduction as a means to cultivate caring practices for the climate using participatory art practices

Abstract: In their ‘feminist project for belonging in the anthropocene’

FOLLOWING MOBILITY TRANSITIONS AROUND THE WORLD

 

A still from the video “Do the Right Mix” (2014) by the European Commission.

On 26 January, 2015 we presented some preliminary results and insights from the two-year project “Living in the Mobility Transition”, funded by the Mobile Lives Forum. The project investigates how transitions to low-carbon mobility are envisioned by policy-makers in 14 countries as well as at the EU level and by the UN and associated bodies.

The countries covered in the study represent a diversity of geographical, political and socio-cultural contexts as well as ways of dealing with the low-carbon mobility agenda. They are the UK, Canada, Brazil, Chile, Norway, Portugal, the Netherlands, the United Arab Emirates, South Africa, Turkey, Kazakhstan, Singapore, South Korea and New Zealand.

A bike-share docking station in Astana, Kazakhstan. Photo by Anna Nikolaeva.

In each country members of our research team have produced surveys of national policy regarding low carbon mobilities as well as three “local” case studies, illustrating how national policies are applied locally or how alternative or complementary visions are developed in a bottom-up fashion. These include e.g. Rapid Bus Transit, cycle schemes, the development of electric vehicles, forms of telework and road pricing among other cases. In particular, we are interested in the ways that mobility policies portray and represent particular kinds of mobile life-styles and, ultimately, give mobilities meaning. Some of these policies are also quite speculative and so we are also interested in how certain mobile futures are being imagined and anticipated.

In the end we will have 14 accounts of national government policy and 42 local case studies in addition to accounts of policy constructed at the international and supranational level in the United Nations and European Union.

A zero-emission truck “Cargohopper” on the streets of Amsterdam. Source: http://www.cargohopper.nl

The project is carried out by research teams at Northeastern University, Boston, and Royal Holloway, University of London. The team includes seven researchers: Tim Cresswell (Northeastern), Peter Adey (Royal Holloway), Cristina Temenos (Northeastern), Jane Yeonjae Lee (Northeastern), Andre Novoa (Northeastern), Anna Nikolaeva (Royal Holloway) and Astrid Wood (now Newcastle University).

The audience responded to the presentation both with comments on the theoretical underpinnings of the project (how to define a “transition”? how do we know that transitions are happening?), questions to the historical situation of mobility transition, as well as with questions on the specifics of findings (are mobility transitions primarily urban, and what historical urban networks have seen certain policies take hold in particular places?). A productive discussion also developed around the issue of the relevance of the nation-station for such a study: on the one hand, visions of low-carbon mobility are themselves mobile as consultants and experts travel the world and ideas are reposted and retweeted; on the other, the nation-states still officially carry the responsibility to report on CO2 emissions and reduce them. Our preliminary findings suggest that cities and NGOs may often be more actively involved in putting transitions forward (and may even sue the state in the court of climate inaction as Urgenda did [add link], yet the states still take decisions on key issues that have impact on mobility and climate change mitigation (e.g. taxation).

Aids to navigating the interval of uncertainty

It was a pleasure to meet with PhD students recently to explore more of the issues I’ve been looking at during my residency; I’m grateful to them for taking time out of their research and writing to join me in the sometimes noisy space next to the Clore Ballroom in the Royal Festival Hall (coinciding with a throng of children on a break from a school outing on the South Bank).

Our discussion was productive in helping me revisit ideas from previous work and encounters and look to new opportunities. As some of you will recall, we looked at tentative ideas of an ‘anticipatory history’ approach to thinking about environmental change in a Landscape Surgery back in January. As I said in my blog post then, concepts such as anticipatory history are helpful to me because they offer an experimental tone and an exploratory approach. In particular, AH seems to suggest three angles of imaginative attack to the complex question of how people relate to the experience and prospects of environmental change as it touches us and our places:

• possible tools, such as ‘reverse chronology’ that explores how change has been perceived in a place and how the future might have been imagined there in past times, help us examine plausible futures there now (a “looking back to look forward”);

• a fresh look at the phrases and metaphors we use when we think about change, and how we often seem to talk past each other when using a common language;

• opportunities for naming new or unfamiliar (and sometimes shocking) responses to environmental change as a means to provoke new perceptions of what could be possible, necessary or desirable.

I circulated six entries from the AH book ahead of our discussions at the Festival Hall: each – Monitoring, Art, Palliative Curation, Story-radar, Futurology, and Acclimatisation – with a different author but all created as part of an interdisciplinary research process into landscape and wildlife change. Together, the fifty or so entries in the Anticipatory History book offer a sort of glossary of possible interpretations of phrases that cropped up in their discussions. I selected these particular entries because they seemed to offer different ways in which we relate to change or the prospects of change. Very broadly, the different tactics that I see on offer here are: measuring and monitoring change; imagining and representing it; marking and mourning it; making, reinforcing and internalising narratives about it; predicting and warning (or else comforting ourselves) about it; and accommodating it in the ways we cope with living in the world.

Other responses are possible, of course – both to the experience or anticipation of change, and to these and the other texts in the book. I am therefore always keen to hear what others think of the entries – and of the gaps between them. My hastily scribbled notes from our conversation that day offer a highly fragmented account of my discussants’ comments and – along with the original entries and my own writings – contribute to an aggregating and intersecting text which will continue to spark ideas and ways to re-approach the originals.

As I was drafting this short post, an email arrived from a writer alerting me to a new exhibition he has helped curate at Brighton’s ONCA gallery. The exhibition theme – which is also the name of the community organisation he has been working with, Rewilding Sussex – brought to mind (of course) another of the entries in the AH book. Rewilding, after all, is also a response to change, and it touches the human inside as well as the more-than-human outside. In her Rewilding entry, Caitlin DeSilvey speaks of some areas within an ex-military site being “restored and adapted for reuse” while others, left to their own devices, were rewilding themselves, “tended by benign neglect”; however, she also points out a tension, as cultural authorship of sites that are deemed to be better off ‘going back to nature’ (and taking us back there with it) can also be a form of historical erasure, where “naturalisation risks negation.” It was DeSilvey who also penned the entry on Palliative Curation, drawing on the form of end-of-life care that can help people in the movement between life and death as a metaphor for how we could also attend to the transformation of natural landscape and heritage features. She cites the possible example of the lighthouse at Orford Ness in Suffolk and the “interval of uncertainty” it faces as the sea continues to erode the shingle it stands upon. Since that article was printed, the lighthouse has been switched off and the dangerous mercury in its lamp removed before it risked contamination of the advancing sea. An official review had already declared that the lighthouse was “no longer required as an aid to navigation” – but the concept of palliative curation and anticipatory history itself suggests that perhaps the new language which such intervals of uncertainty suggest – here, between first the light disappearing and then the lighthouse – offer their own aid to our navigation of change and our place within it.

My residency has now drawn to a close, and I am grateful to Harriet and all those who took part in the discussions at Royal Festival Hall, the Landscape Surgery and elsewhere and for the papers I was able to read and draw further ideas from.

Mark Bicton, Entrepreneur in Residence