ECOPOETIC PLACE-MAKING: NATURE AND MOBILITY IN CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN POETRY by Judith Rauscher (A Book Review)
ECOPOETIC PLACE-MAKING: NATURE AND MOBILITY IN CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN POETRY by Judith Rauscher (A Book Review)

Summary/Abstract: Twenty years into the 21st century, the matters of forced mobilities,relocations and displacement are more than ever issues at hand,as we keep on witnessing ceaseless global migratory movements resultingfrom political persecutions, wars, violence, and/or climate change. Takingthe cue from the intersections of environmental transformations, globalecological crisis and human mass mobilities, Judith Rauscher’s EcopoeticPlace-Making (2023) focuses on contemporary “American ecopoetriesof migration,” namely the “the oeuvres of […] chosen poets that prominentlyfeature American places and American histories of displacement”(2023: 31). Drawing mostly from the fields of Ecocriticism and MobilitiesStudies, her work explores the complex relationship between migratorysubjects and the non-human world, in particular, “the many waysin which human-nature relations are shaped by physical and geographicalmovement, whether voluntary or forced” (2023: 34) as well as “thevarying effects that these displacements in place and between placeshave […] on the environmental imaginaries in the works of contemporaryAmerican poets of migration” (2023: 24). Ecopoetic Place-Makingoffers an interesting and thought-provoking analysis of five contemporaryauthors (Craig Santos Perez, Juliana Spahr, Derek Walcott, AghaShahid Ali, and Etel Adnan), migrants of different national, cultural, ethnic,and racial backgrounds. Drawing inspiration from their own experiencesof mobilities, these poets, through their works, challenge restrictiveand exclusive ideas of place-attachment. This text is a critical reviewof Judith Rauscher’s monograph.

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