The weave of presence: a creative and critical exploration of the enactment of animal subjectivity in poetry

This finite planet, radically altered by human activity, faces both climate change and biodiversity loss. We urgently need to recognise our connectedness and interdependence with the more-than-human world, yet human estrangement from nonhuman nature persists. This thesis explores poetry’s potential role to re-connect us with nature, particularly other animals. Specifically, it explores, critically and creatively, the poetic enactment of nonhuman subjectivity, and animal presence. Theoretical approaches informing the project include Martin Buber’s study of ‘I-Thou’ modes of relating to the world; Iain McGilchrist’s examination of left and right brain hemisphere differences; Ralph Acampora’s concept of symphysis, and posthumanism’s challenges to human exceptionalism. I also explore the implications of going ‘beyond the brain’, privileging instead embodiment and whole living creatures. The thesis comprises three chapters investigating animal senses, emotions, and language, together with examples of how these have been enacted poetically, drawn from the work of Les Murray, Elizabeth Bishop and others. A collection of poetry titled ‘…the weave of presence’ explores the ideas examined in the critical section. Both critical and creative elements of the thesis are informed by science as well as the humanities. In investigating the poetic enactment of nonhuman animals, I draw on the work of Scott Knickerbocker (‘sensuous poesis’), Randy Malamud (‘empathetic imagination’), and Aaron Moe’s attention to animals’ ‘bodily poiesis’. I embrace both Malamud’s ‘ecocritical aesthetic’, and Michael Malay’s conceptualisation of ‘seeing poetically’. Through investigating animal senses, emotion, and language, I conclude that while humans are evolutionarily connected to other animals, it is important to respect and celebrate animals’ alterity. Further, while poetry has a role in re-connecting humans empathically with the more-than-human world, poetry is not the only means of accomplishing this, and on its own is insufficient. Finally, poetry’s ‘creatureliness’ can enable, albeit imperfectly, the poetic enactment of animal being.