AustLit

'If ecopoetics necessarily entails concepts and acts of ecological justice in the making and reception of a poem, it can also too easily privilege a conversation about human responsibility to nature while, to some extent at least, obviating human responsibility to humans. Much of the overt damage humans have done to the biosphere has come about as a direct or indirect result of humans mistreating and exploiting humans, and has been a 'by-product' of the violation of the rights an exploiter applies to themselves but not to their victims. I would also argue that the exploitation of animals for capitalist profit is a violation of life rights too, as is the abuse of ecosystems such as forests or rivers, wetlands or woodlands, and so on. In trying to create complex models of justice that account for intersectionality but also parallelism of rights and needs, and in accounting for the agency of living things to exist in their differences and with their own precepts of existence, we might look to the poem as an organic and practical tool of articulating and respecting what often seem contradictory narratives of being.' (Publication summary)