Megan Kaminski is Poet and Professor of Environmental Studies at the University of Kansas, where her teaching and research work at the intersection of poetic practice, environmental advocacy, and community care. She is interested in the ways that place calls us into relationships of care for the land and for the various human and nonhuman persons (plants and animals) that reside there, and in the ways that call reaches across political and cultural differences. Her work illuminates and engages with that call into reciprocity—and invites others into these relationships in their own daily lives. She is the author of three books of poetry, Gentlewomen (Noemi Press, 2020), Deep City (Noemi Press, 2015) and Desiring Map (Coconut Books, 2012) and two artists books, Prairie Divination (Sunseen Books, 2022), a book of illustrated essays and oracle deck, and Quietly Between (A Viewing Project. 2022), a co-authored collection of poetry and photography. Her place-based sound, poetry, and art installations have appeared at museums, public gardens, and libraries across the country, and her poetry and essays regularly appear in literary magazines and journals. Her social practice includes three edited volumes of nature poetry and art, as well as hundreds of community workshops, place-based poetry walks, and community readings, talks, and performances, all centered on co-creating with and within our ecosystems towards community connection, healing, and liberatory futures.
She works at intersections of plant studies, somatics, and ceremony, and her work is informed by interdisciplinary research in social welfare, plant biology, theology, and philosophy, as well as previous work in the healing arts and at non-profit environmental organizations. Her writing and interdisciplinary research have been supported by Dumbarton Oaks at Harvard University, the Plant Animacies Workshop of Hixon-Riggs Program for Responsive Science at Harvey Mudd College, the Goodall Environmental Studies Center at Wofford College, Poesia Europa, the Vashon Artist Residency, Arte Studio Ginestrelle, the Tallgrass Artist Residency, the Summer Forum for Inquiry + Exchange, the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, the Hall Center for the Humanities, a Keeler Family Intra-University Professorship, and the Spencer Museum of Art. Her creative work and scholarship aim to undo the cultures of dominance and exploitation that have brought us to this current moment of ecological crisis and inequality.
“Under tree canopy” from Plant-Human Quarterly ‘s Summer Solstice Reading
