AustLit

'The legacy of Deborah Bird Rose’s scholarship and life has come into focus at a critical moment when the ecological crisis no longer appears to the mainstream as a future threat but is increasingly becoming understood as a current reality. Debbie loomed in my life as an exemplary figure and consummate thinker, who became influential in my nascent understanding of the riddle that had troubled my adolescent intuition, in the form of the unfolding ecology of the Anthropocene. Firstly, as a person in print, then through an invigorating correspondence as a mentor and colleague, finally and more importantly as a dear friend and confidant.' (Introduction)

'In this essay, I consider the poetics of the weather and studies in creativity, as a site to develop emplaced relations for a multi-species sense of place and research methods for place-based inquiry. I take up the theme of this TEXT Special Issue, ‘Writing creates ecology: Ecology creates writing’ as a conversation seeking generative responses to current dilemmas in terms of both ecology and higher learning. The context of the broader conversation sustains a personal inquiry that is quite specific and particular. The relationship I have to the work and that, to which it speaks, is intimate and lived. The themes woven into the piece are in tension with an individual and collective responsibility to respond to the more-than-human world in ecological crisis. The work is in progress, speculative and open-ended; I embody the work not merely as another project but as seeking a manner of life to live. The focus of these concerns can be summarised as revolving around varied forms of attention, modes of inquiry and modes of address. The material is accumulative and accretive, predicated upon the continuity of self-directed field and archival work, undertaken in the form of experimental philosophy, creative writing and living.The manner of writing is multimodal, non-linear, fractal, writing ecology as the resonance of a place from which the ecology emerges in the writing, reliant upon a recursive and synergistic recollection of fragments, shards, uneven and jagged pieces to formulate a whole. The ecological imagination at work morphs into a substantive form of creativity, as an everyday practice making sense and making art, as ecology and as cultural memory.' (Author's abstract)

'This [essay] uses the beach in relation to the Solitary Islands to consider the intimacy of sensuous geographies active in the landscapes of the coast. As spaces of nurture, refuge and the practice of everyday life, sensuous geographies are relevant to the place-making experiences of exile (forced, self-imposed, psychic and existential). The practice of space contingent to place-making in this manner turns upon embodied knowledge, the immediacy of experience, lucid reverie and the familiarity of the everyday. The status of the beach as a cultural icon, embodied en masse in summer holidays and ritualised throughout life stages has become embedded in the national psyche of Australia. The beach resonates with the notion of 'landscapes of exile' in complex and ambiguous ways that deserve critical examination. This becomes apparent in the context of negotiations concerning the entanglement of nature and culture, settler and indigenous culture and the ethics of belonging. These come into sharp relief through an ecological reading of space, place and region.'

Source: Landscapes of Exile conference website, http://www.scu.edu.au/research/cpsj/landscapesofexiles/abstracts2.html#KimSatchel Sighted: 31/10/08.