Conversations with the Kagawong River - by Sophie Anne Edwards (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

A site-specific engagement with an ecosystem of Mnidoo Mnising (Manitoulin Island), Conversations with the Kagawong River raises the possibility of collaboration with the more-than-human. The author spent several years learning to listen to the Gaagigewang Ziibi (Kagawong River) and to follow the rhythms and patterns of its flora and fauna, the weather and the water. She invited the participation of various collaborators - woodpeckers, otters, currents, ice, grasses. The resulting poems, supported by local Elders, language speakers, and historians, make visible the colonial, environmental, and social processes that construct an ecosystem and (settler) relationships to it.

Review Quotes

"The Gaagigewang Ziibi ecosystem speaks through poetry, through Sophie. Readers will be inspired to slow down, examine their environment, engage with nature, and maybe even learn a language. Perhaps inspired by this work we will all have conversations with a river, or a lake, or forest. True deep observant conversations." - Shelley Pearen, The Manitoulin Expositor