Community, culture, nature: northern BC women?s ecopoetry

Community, culture, nature: Northern BC Women's Ecopoetry examines an approach of bioregionalist co-habitation, including sustainability as a keynote and the understanding that community includes human and non-human beings. I discuss the poetry of women nature poets based in Northern British Columbia: Donna Kane, Si Transken, Gillian Wigmore, Dani Pigeau, Heather Harris, Sheila Peters, and Joan Conway. My thesis is that bioregionalist co-habitation, as explored by these Northern British Columbian women poets, challenges embedded Judeo-Christian ideology which asserts humankind?s dominion over the natural world, and supposes that humans are superior to and separate from flora, fauna, and landforms. Ecocriticism has many theories and modes. One predominant mode asserts ?all that is green is good? while ?all culture represents decay.? This body of scholarly and creative writing produces in readers a kind of reverence but does not necessarily guarantee action. Romanticism in nature writing has not prevented ecological disasters. Thus this dissertation argues in favour of a bioregionalist approach, which guides us in devising intimate, place-based ways of living with the land in relation to larger global forces and innovative ways of considering the environment through literature. The pragmatic aspect of bioregionalism mitigates the tendencies in ecocriticism to romanticize nature. I analyse representative poems by these poets and show that their co-construction with nature can inform a larger audience on how to pay attention to differences in nature. This dissertation has two aims. It shows how these poets articulate an understanding of place, flora, fauna, and landform as here and as home. The second aim is to foreground Northern BC women?s poetry. While Chapter 1 of my dissertation analyses critical debates informing ecocriticism and ecofeminism, Chapter 2 maintains that these women poets produce and promote a community of flora, fauna, humans, and landforms in relation to culture. Chapters 3, 4, and 5 examine the poetry of Kane, Transken, and Wigmore respectively, and the last chapter provides readings of selected poems by Pigeau, Harris, Peters, and Conway. The importance of this study lies in demonstrating what the local has to offer a global world that has become ecologically unbalanced.