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Document Type

Article

Publication Date

11-15-2023

Abstract

This paper, adapted from a talk given for the Institute of the Humanities at Simon Fraser University on April 26 2023, explores intersecting issues taken up by an in-progress long poem I am currently writing. That long poem, “The Middle,” explores questions of climate displacement, migration, and refuge via a writing-though of Dante’s Purgatorio—itself a poem of pilgrimage. A further context for both the poem and the paper about the poem is an ongoing project of walking in solidarity with refugees, asylum seekers, and immigration detainees that the author has been involved with since 2015. In seeking to “override our human tendency to separate ourselves from the natural world” (James Bridle), the paper explores inter-species solidarities—between human beings and plants—in a time when all life is moving towards the poles.

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