Registration for the Conference on Ecopoetics is now closed to the public.
Please note, however, that there are three readings—on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights—which are free and open to the public.
We have closed registration because we have reached capacity and we simply cannot accommodate any greater number of attendees, given our space, resource, and budgetary constraints. We have worked to be as accommodating and inclusive as possible while also respecting our responsibility to our hosts, the English Department at UC Berkeley, whose facilities are limited.
Our hope is that this gathering of environmentally minded poets, academics, artists, and activists will be the first of more to come.
Excursions
Friday, Feb. 22, 8 to 11 a.m.
We invite all participants to sign up for one of the following excursions. (You will be prompted to select your excursion at the registration page; however, excursion sign-up is entirely optional.) Excursions with an asterisk (*) take place off campus and may entail a nominal transportation fee (to be determined and collected later). Note: some excursions will run longer than three hours while others will run under, starting later in the morning.
The Aeolian Marsh: An Embodied Poem*
Artist Megan Berner and poet Jared Stanley will lead an excursion/embodied poem at Arrowhead Marsh
in Martin Luther King, Jr. Regional Shoreline Park. The poem will be
sewn on ten handmade flags, its words interacting with marsh, wind, and
smell. This poem evokes questions about the political implications of
memory and marking territory. More broadly, the poem asks whether
ecology, ecotone, touch, and language can make an environmental poem, a
poem "in" place.
Buried Treasure Island: A Tour and Workshop*
David Buuck, founder of BARGE (The Bay Area Research Group in Enviro-aesthetics),
will facilitate a site-specific workshop on Treasure Island, combining
elements from "Buried Treasure Island: a detour of the future" (produced
for the 2008 Bay Area Now Biennial, a
cross-genre "guidebook," gallery installation, audio podcast tour, and
guided tour and performance) with hands-on discussions of research,
writing, and methodology for urban ecopoetics. Rather than a
conventional walking tour, where "ecology" is the thing we look at or
for, BARGE practices an embodied engagement with both the materials of
the vernacular environment as well as our own production as mediating
writers and citizens. (Note: transportation time is one hour round
trip.)
Guided Walk with Naturalist David Lukas
Join California naturalist David Lukas for a light, educational hike in/around the UC Berkeley campus' Strawberry Canyon.
Helping Networks: Helping Dances: A Participatory Performance Action
Join
artists and activists Petra Kuppers and Neil Marcus in a participatory
performance that enacts disability culture and interdependence. In
somatic flow, participants will activate thoughts and emotions about the
network of helper economies that we create for ourselves, bringing
helpers, both human and other-than-human, into the circle, and relating
these experiences to issues of class, age, ethnicity, race, disability,
humanity, animality, spirituality, and sexuality.
Inanimate Subjects: A Video Screening with Music
Artist
and poet Catherine Taylor will present video and music on/around
military and surveillance drones and the politics of landscape. At issue
are ideas about autonomy, geography, violated boundaries, vertiginous
perspectives, the altered soundscapes of surveillance zones, and the
radical alteration of the human relationship to the sky.
Point Reyes National Seashore Hike*
Experience wilderness in West Marin’s Point Reyes National Seashore. Excursion leaders Mairi
Pileggi and Nicola Pitchford will tailor this coastal hike to the needs and
interests of participants. The hike features time for reflection and on-site writing.
Sponsored by the Environmental Action Committee of West Marin and the
School of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences of Dominican University
of California. (Note: transportation time is three hours round trip;
participants will leave at 7 a.m. and not return to Berkeley until 1
p.m. Coffee and pastries are provided.)
Urban Farm Tour*
Visit a Berkeley urban farm, Urban Adamah, which grows a variety of fruits and vegetables and also raises chickens and bees, distributing all produce to members of the community most in need. Learn about the farm's gardening and community education initiatives, and afterward, join other participants in a conversation about dwelling, community, sustainability, and privilege. Coordinated by Will Elliott.
Sunday Lunch and Service Project
Stella Nonna Boxed Lunches
Sunday, Feb. 24, 1:30 p.m.
Participants may pre-order a Stella Nonna boxed lunch. Boxed lunches will be served Sunday after closing events and before the service project. Each lunch includes a sandwich, side salad, a sweet, and a
Hansen Natural soda.
Strawberry Creek Preservation Service Project
Sunday, Feb. 24, 2:30 to 5:30 p.m.
At the end of the weekend, spend time outside with fellow conference participants and contribute to a longstanding restoration effort to monitor and improve the water quality of Strawberry Creek and its surrounding habitats. This service project takes place on the UC Berkeley campus and is coordinated by Hilary Kaplan.
