Rowley, Mari-Lou

English

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The Goose
Volume 15 | No. 1 Article 32
9-1-2016
Prairie Surreal--A Digital-Poetic Road Trip
Mari-Lou Rowley
University of Saskatchewan
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Recommended Citation / Citation recommandée
Rowley, Mari-Lou. "Prairie Surreal--A Digital-Poetic Road Trip." The Goose, vol. 15 , no. 1 , article 32, 2016,
https://scholars.wlu.ca/thegoose/vol15/iss1/32.
Prairie Surreal—A Digital-Poetic Road Trip 
https://vimeo.com/173414750 
 
Note on the Text 
 Two notions have compelled me since moving back to Saskatchewan ten years ago—
poetic ferality and prairie surrealism. As a writer and poet who has lived most of my adult life in 
large urban centres, I found moving back to the prairies an unexpectedly alien experience. I felt 
like an outsider in my own hometown. And as a writer who has been influenced by urban 
avant-garde literature, visual art, performance, and dance, as well as my work as a science 
writer, I found my poetry regarded with suspicion in a community that fosters and champions 
“prairie realism.” A genre I found more surreal than Dali’s house on the Costa Brava. 
 Yet I love the prairies, the landscape, the people, the wildlife, and the wildness of a 
place and climate that can kill you at any time of the year if you are not prepared, as my first 
poetry mentor, Anne Szumigalski, used to say. A place and environment where, as Pamela 
Banting stated in her plenary talk, “Making Scents: Signature, Text, Habitat,” at the Poetics 
Ecologies Conference in Brussels (2008), you need the ability to “read for your life.” Indeed, 
since moving back to Saskatchewan I have come between a black bear and her cub, 
encountered a timber wolf, and learned how to catch and filet fish, recognize cougar tracks and 
bear scat, and shoot a rifle. These experiences have made their way into my poetry as well, 
partly as content, but more importantly as a theory of poetic emergence. Poetry as organic 
emergent system. Ferality as poetic enactivism, where poet and poem co-emerge with inner 
and outer environments. I have become more wedded to the landscape, and this land, than I 
had ever imagined, yet I am aware that my lived experience, my “intentionality” in the 
phenomenological sense, is shaped by my urban self as well. So, in order to fully experience this 
place, to try to understand the essence of prairie realism, I bought a little car and took a road 
trip to parts of the province I had never encountered before—grasslands, open range, parkland 
lakes, Carolinian forests missed by ice-age glaciers, dinosaur country.  
1
Rowley: Prairie Surreal
Published by / Publié par Scholars Commons @ Laurier, 2016
 Prairie Surreal is a poetic bricolague of video, photos, text, and voice that explores these 
experiences. The voice-over poems are from “Feral Verses” in Unus Mundus (Anvil 2013). The 
photos and video were shot primarily in southwestern Saskatchewan, between Eastend and 
Cypress Hills, during a month-long residency at the Wallace Stegner House.  
 This video was produced as part of a ten-day intensive Digital Storytelling and Poetics 
course jointly offered by the University of Saskatchewan and the Sage Hill Writing Experience. 
My thanks to instructors Ellen Moffat and Allison Muri, and my other (much younger and tech-
savvy) classmates for their insights and assistance. 
 
Works Cited 
Banting, Pamela. “Making Scents: Signature, Text, Habitat.” Poetic Ecologies: Nature as Text 
and Text as Nature in English Language Verse Conference. Université Libre de Bruxelles. 
Brussels, Belgium. 17 May 2008. Keynote Address. 
 
Rowley, Mari-Lou. Unus Mundus. Vancouver: Anvil Press Publishers, 2013. Print. 
 
Rowley, Mari-Lou. Poetic Enactivism: Poetry as Organic Emergent System. Rampike, Windsor, 
Eco-Poetics, 18.1, 2009. Print. 
 
Rowley, Mari-Lou. “Ecopoetics as Enactivist Poetics.” Poetic Ecologies: Nature as Text and 
Text as Nature. Ed. Franca Bellarsi. Brussels, New York: P.I.E-Peter Lang, New Comparative 
Poetics Series, (forthcoming).  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
MARI-LOU ROWLEY has published nine collections of poetry and has performed and lectured 
nationally and internationally. Her most recent book, Unus Mundus (Anvil Press 2013), was 
nominated for three Saskatchewan Book Awards and was second-place winner of the John V. 
Hicks Long Manuscript Award. Rowley is currently completing an interdisciplinary PhD in new 
media, neurophenomenology, and empathy at the University of Saskatchewan. 
https://usask.academia.edu/MariLouRowley |  https://marilourowley.com 
2
The Goose, Vol. 15, No. 1 [2016], Art. 32
https://scholars.wlu.ca/thegoose/vol15/iss1/32


Prairie Surreal--A Digital-Poetic Road Trip

Wilfrid Laurier University

The GooseVolume 15 | No. 1 Article 329-1-2016Prairie Surreal--A Digital-Poetic Road TripMari-Lou RowleyUniversity of SaskatchewanPart of the Creative Writing Commons, Critical and Cultural Studies Commons, Literature inEnglish, North America Commons, Nature and Society Relations Commons, and the Place andEnvironment CommonsFollow this and additional works at / Suivez-nous ainsi que d’autres travaux et œuvres:https://scholars.wlu.ca/thegooseThis article is brought to you for free and open access by Scholars Commons @ Laurier. It has been accepted for inclusion in The Goose by anauthorized editor of Scholars Commons @ Laurier. For more information, please contact scholarscommons@wlu.ca.Cet article vous est accessible gratuitement et en libre accès grâce à Scholars Commons @ Laurier. Le texte a été approuvé pour faire partie intégrantede la revue The Goose par un rédacteur autorisé de Scholars Commons @ Laurier. Pour de plus amples informations, contactezscholarscommons@wlu.ca.Recommended Citation / Citation recommandéeRowley, Mari-Lou. "Prairie Surreal--A Digital-Poetic Road Trip." The Goose, vol. 15 , no. 1 , article 32, 2016,https://scholars.wlu.ca/thegoose/vol15/iss1/32.Prairie Surreal—A Digital-Poetic Road Trip https://vimeo.com/173414750  Note on the Text  Two notions have compelled me since moving back to Saskatchewan ten years ago—poetic ferality and prairie surrealism. As a writer and poet who has lived most of my adult life in large urban centres, I found moving back to the prairies an unexpectedly alien experience. I felt like an outsider in my own hometown. And as a writer who has been influenced by urban avant-garde literature, visual art, performance, and dance, as well as my work as a science writer, I found my poetry regarded with suspicion in a community that fosters and champions “prairie realism.” A genre I found more surreal than Dali’s house on the Costa Brava.  Yet I love the prairies, the landscape, the people, the wildlife, and the wildness of a place and climate that can kill you at any time of the year if you are not prepared, as my first poetry mentor, Anne Szumigalski, used to say. A place and environment where, as Pamela Banting stated in her plenary talk, “Making Scents: Signature, Text, Habitat,” at the Poetics Ecologies Conference in Brussels (2008), you need the ability to “read for your life.” Indeed, since moving back to Saskatchewan I have come between a black bear and her cub, encountered a timber wolf, and learned how to catch and filet fish, recognize cougar tracks and bear scat, and shoot a rifle. These experiences have made their way into my poetry as well, partly as content, but more importantly as a theory of poetic emergence. Poetry as organic emergent system. Ferality as poetic enactivism, where poet and poem co-emerge with inner and outer environments. I have become more wedded to the landscape, and this land, than I had ever imagined, yet I am aware that my lived experience, my “intentionality” in the phenomenological sense, is shaped by my urban self as well. So, in order to fully experience this place, to try to understand the essence of prairie realism, I bought a little car and took a road trip to parts of the province I had never encountered before—grasslands, open range, parkland lakes, Carolinian forests missed by ice-age glaciers, dinosaur country.  1Rowley: Prairie SurrealPublished by / Publié par Scholars Commons @ Laurier, 2016 Prairie Surreal is a poetic bricolague of video, photos, text, and voice that explores these experiences. The voice-over poems are from “Feral Verses” in Unus Mundus (Anvil 2013). The photos and video were shot primarily in southwestern Saskatchewan, between Eastend and Cypress Hills, during a month-long residency at the Wallace Stegner House.   This video was produced as part of a ten-day intensive Digital Storytelling and Poetics course jointly offered by the University of Saskatchewan and the Sage Hill Writing Experience. My thanks to instructors Ellen Moffat and Allison Muri, and my other (much younger and tech-savvy) classmates for their insights and assistance.  Works Cited Banting, Pamela. “Making Scents: Signature, Text, Habitat.” Poetic Ecologies: Nature as Text and Text as Nature in English Language Verse Conference. Université Libre de Bruxelles. Brussels, Belgium. 17 May 2008. Keynote Address.  Rowley, Mari-Lou. Unus Mundus. Vancouver: Anvil Press Publishers, 2013. Print.  Rowley, Mari-Lou. Poetic Enactivism: Poetry as Organic Emergent System. Rampike, Windsor, Eco-Poetics, 18.1, 2009. Print.  Rowley, Mari-Lou. “Ecopoetics as Enactivist Poetics.” Poetic Ecologies: Nature as Text and Text as Nature. Ed. Franca Bellarsi. Brussels, New York: P.I.E-Peter Lang, New Comparative Poetics Series, (forthcoming).           MARI-LOU ROWLEY has published nine collections of poetry and has performed and lectured nationally and internationally. Her most recent book, Unus Mundus (Anvil Press 2013), was nominated for three Saskatchewan Book Awards and was second-place winner of the John V. Hicks Long Manuscript Award. Rowley is currently completing an interdisciplinary PhD in new media, neurophenomenology, and empathy at the University of Saskatchewan. https://usask.academia.edu/MariLouRowley |  https://marilourowley.com 2The Goose, Vol. 15, No. 1 [2016], Art. 32https://scholars.wlu.ca/thegoose/vol15/iss1/32

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Prairie Surreal--A Digital-Poetic Road Trip

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