Wordsfest: The Poetics of Ecology

How can the poetic imagination help us to reimagine our relationship to the environment and our natural heritage? Words is pleased to present a poetry reading by acclaimed poets Karen Houle, Tom Cull, and David Huebert, and a conversation with our host and moderator Kevin Heslop.

During a time of climate emergency, we have invited three poets to explore how their writing practice is inspired by their engagement with the natural world. Tom Cull’s new book of poetry, Bad Animals, foregrounds his relationship to the Thames River, or Deshkan Ziibiing, as a site of regional identity, environmental awareness, Indigenous history, and creativity. In her new book, Karen Houle employs the wiliest tool she knows—poetry—to contemplate the complexities of the Grand River watershed in southern Ontario, stretching our notions of what can be known about a river. David Huebert’s Humanimus presents a world of soiled nature, of compromised ecology, of toxic transcendence.

Tom Cull is a poet, a creative writing professor, an active participant in London’s vibrant arts scene, and a community organizer. His poetry is accessible and engaged with our social, political, and environmental realities. He writes across a variety of poetic forms, from the traditional lyric to spoken word to the experimental. His commitment to exploring human connection with animals and natural environments is evident in his 2013 chapbook, What the Badger Said, and his 2018 full-length collection, Bad Animals.

David Huebert is a Canadian writer of fiction, poetry, and critical prose whose work has won the CBC Short Story Prize, the Sheldon Currie Fiction Prize, and the Walrus Poetry Prize, among other awards. David’s work has been published in magazines such as The Fiddlehead, EVENT, enRoute, and Canadian Notes and Queries. His debut short fiction collection, Peninsula Sinking, was published by Biblioasis in Fall 2017. David is also the author of the 2015 poetry collection We Are No Longer the Smart Kids in Class.

Karen Houle is the author of two poetry collections, Ballast (1995) and During (2000). She teaches in the Philosophy department at the University of Guelph. She is also involved with the Guelph Centre for Urban Organic Farming, where her interest in putting environmental ethics into practice has shifted her toward land-based approaches to learning. She lives in Guelph, Ontario.