Hall Center for the Humanities, Resident Fellows Speaker Series

Megan Kaminski will talk about her research and writing towards the completion of a new book of poetry, Withness, which focuses on environmental crisis and our capacities for endurance, adaptation, and connection. The book continues Kaminski’s exploration of interspecies alliances as the basis for an ethics of mutual understanding and care, with the poems serving as points of encounter that encourage further engagement with the more-than-human inhabitants with which we share our lives. Moreover, the book seeks to counter extractive and exploitative relationships with the earth and with each other. While the poems document the current moment of environmental devastation and climate crisis, they present possibilities for future engagement and connection with others by expanding and complicating the notion of the individual self. Kaminski’s larger writing project focuses on connecting to our shared ecosystem as a source of knowledge and inspiration for strategies to live in their world, to grieve and heal after loss, and to re-align thinking towards kinship, community, and sustainability.