Editorial introduction to The Goose Volume 16, Issue 2 (2018)

Defraeye, Julien

Dennis Unrau, Melanie

Di Battista, Amanda M.

Follett, Alec

English

Scholars Commons

Editors\u27 Notebook

Wilfrid Laurier University

The GooseVolume 16 | No. 2 Article 482-28-2018Editors' NotebookAmanda M. Di BattistaYork UniversityAlec FollettUniversity of GuelphMelanie Dennis UnrauUniversity of ManitobaJulien DefraeyeUniversity of WaterlooFollow 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 recommandéeDi Battista, Amanda M., Alec Follett, Melanie Dennis Unrau, and Julien Defraeye. "Editors' Notebook." The Goose, vol. 16 , no. 2 ,article 48, 2018,https://scholars.wlu.ca/thegoose/vol16/iss2/48.        AMANDA DI BATTISTA ALEC FOLLETT MELANIE DENNIS UNRAU AND JULIEN DEFRAEYE  Editors’ Notebook  I feel hope crest in the enduring indifference krill possess for humans killing each other over gods and oil tankers and sanctimonious ideologies; the vulnerable line shores   —Diane Guichon, “Krill Kill” Preparing the latest issue of The Goose for publication, we are aware of the many reasons for anger and despair—while the justice system fails Indigenous peoples in Canada, megaprojects move forward, and public figures are called out for bad behaviour, we each feel our entanglements in the ecological, economic, colonial, and variously oppressive regimes we inhabit and despise.  Yet, as editors, we are continually struck by the power of writing and art that takes up environmental injustice, colonial violence, and heartache, finding beauty and hope amid despair. The poetry, scholarship, criticism, and art in this issue engage with the ethics and practices of human living in our compromised and messy world—something like what Swarnalatha Rangarajan calls the “restorative earthwork” to be done in the sites where we have buried our dead, our trash, and our nuclear waste. The kind of hope this work engenders is not starry eyed or falsely optimistic. It unseats familiar models of human agency, including the idea that we can be trusted to fix the messes we have created. It involves collaboration and cohabitation with a diverse range of relations and allies: students and teachers, writers and readers, ruins, bears, fishing cats, glaciers, bees, trees, weapons, toxins, starlings, and krill. For example, Diane Guichon and Sarah Melanie Harrill's “Krill Kill Project”—from which we’ve borrowed the lines of our epigraph—provides an important reminder that our desires for likes, 1Di Battista et al.: Editors' NotebookPublished by / Publié par Scholars Commons @ Laurier, 2018        shares, water, and oil are set within a larger world in which the “earth worm persists” without thought or care for the preoccupations of humanity. The hope that crests in Guichon’s lines is located far away from the idea that humans can fix the world.  Guichon and Harrill's work resonates with Edie Steiner’s photo essay "Among the Ruins," which highlights the scale of the abandoned infrastructures of colonial-capitalist modernity. Within a resurgent wilderness, Steiner invites viewers to contemplate deserted landscapes as “embedded histories” of labour, loss, and memory. Likewise, Irene Oore’s watercolour Winter Birches at York Redoubt, the cover image for this issue, turns its attention away from signs of militarization on the historic site and toward the indifferent and thriving birch trees. Oore's use of light, colour, and texture to bring the birches to life suggests that the fortifications are not the only claim to the landscape. In this issue we feature two essays on scientific fieldwork, written from the unique perspectives of teacher and student, that ponder the role of the researcher. In “Gothic: A Field Journal,” Grant Paton looks back with eager fondness on his summer research in the shadow of Colorado’s Elk Mountains and pauses to reflect on climate change and raise questions about the ethics of scientific research. Lyn Baldwin offers a humble approach to pedagogy that is student-centred and reflexive. Baldwin’s efforts to generate a community of learners and creators are evident in her article, which includes several of her students’ field journals that merge art and science, thoughtful reflection and scientific observation. They are beautiful not only for their visuals but also for the environmental care they embody. Baldwin observes her own learning process about “the reciprocity of natural history”: “in teaching us first to notice, and then to care about, our more-than-human neighbours, natural history stories a place for us alongside them.” We are delighted to feature two works that engage the novel as a critical form of environmental (re)imagining. The first is an in-depth and wide-ranging interview with Swarnalatha Rangarajan, a prominent Indian ecocritic and writer. Sufina K. and Bhuvaneswari R. ask Swarnalatha about her entry into ecocritical scholarship, the importance of regional and cultural difference to environmental thought, and her novel Final Instructions. Second, excerpts from Vivian Demuth’s novel Bear War-den follow a park warden and the bears who live under the surveillance of conservation officers in the park. Using experimental forms in prose, poetry, and photography, Demuth explores the role of the human in ecology and raises questions about the ethics and practices of conservation. The Goose's Poetry editor, Emily McGiffin, put out a call for “wrack zone” poetry in anticipation of ALECC’s upcoming conference on the same theme, and the response was impressive. Many of the poems in this issue take up the wrack zone—the ever-changing part of a shoreline where waterborne items come to rest—directly or symbolically. Bodies of water surge through the collection. There is also considerable interest in the weather and in extinctions past and present. Thanks, Emily, for curating a significant poetic conversation that we look forward to continuing at the conference. 2The Goose, Vol. 16, No. 2 [2018], Art. 48https://scholars.wlu.ca/thegoose/vol16/iss2/48        Issue 16.2 has a robust and diverse book reviews section that includes reviews of The Wolf is Back by Robert Priest, Notes from a Feminist Killjoy by Erin Wunker, Exposed by Stacy Alaimo, A Two-Spirit Journey by Ma-Nee Chacaby, and a comparative review of Islands of Grass by Trevor Herriot and The Long Walk by Jan Zwicky. Thanks to book reviews editor David Carruthers for his excellent work. The Goose and ALECC are committed to working in both English and French and we look forward to facilitating more connections across environmental humanities scholarship in both of Canada’s official languages. We are glad to publish a French review by Hans-Jürgen Greif of Michel Collot’s Pour une géographie littéraire in Issue 16.2, and we hope to feature more works by francophone writers, artists, and critics in upcoming issues. Here are some brief notes from Julien Defraeye, our French editor, about the French section: Même si les contributions de langue française n’ont pas été aussi nombreuses qu’on l’aurait espéré pour ce numéro de la revue The Goose, un des objectifs principaux de l’ALECC est toujours de faire le pont entre les deux langues officielles du Canada, que ce soit dans le domaine de la recherche ou de la création. Dans ce sens, L’ALECC a accueilli sa première séance en langue française à sa conférence biennale à Kingston au printemps 2016, afin de nouer un premier dialogue entre chercheurs. Nous espérons que cette première expérience stimule un intérêt pour les années à venir. Jeunes chercheurs et artistes, n’hésitez pas à vous manifester! Dans ce numéro, nous vous invitons à consulter la lecture analytique d’Hans-Jürgen Greif de Pour une géographie littéraire (2014) de Michel Collot, qui propose de brosser un tableau de l’ouverture de la littérature face à l’intégration de la géographie. Pour le numéro 17.1, la revue The Goose se penchera sur la question de l’activisme dans le domaine de l’art; l’appel à communications arrive sous peu!  As always, publication of The Goose would not be possible without the generous efforts of our section editors, reviewers, copy editors, and contributors, nor without the support of the ALECC executive and scholarly community. ALECC continues to be a vibrant network of people interested in environmental scholarship, art, and activism, and we are looking forward to ALECC’s 2018 conference, June 20-23 at the University of Victoria. Conference details, including a schedule and registration, will be available at http://hcmc.uvic.ca/alecc2018/index.php.  ~~~ Summer 2018 Issue on the Artist-Activist and Activist Art As we think toward issue 17.1 of The Goose, scheduled for summer 2018, we are interested in the praxis of activists and artists responding to environmental justice issues, from hydroelectric dams and pipelines to anti-immigration laws and gentrification, who not only critique but also imagine alternatives. For our upcoming issue on activist art and the figure of the environmental artist-activist, we invite writing, visual art, digital media, poetry, and sound recordings that engage creatively and critically with/in environmental activism. Watch for a more detailed call for submissions in the coming weeks.  3Di Battista et al.: Editors' NotebookPublished by / Publié par Scholars Commons @ Laurier, 2018         AMANDA DI BATTISTA is a PhD candidate in the Faculty of Environmental Studies at York University and co-editor of The Goose. Her research focuses on the use of literary works to foster environmental imagination by critical environmental educators at the postsecondary level. She is also the project coordinator for the Laurier Centre for Sustainable Food Systems, where she works with scholars and community members on sustainable food systems research and advocacy.  ALEC FOLLETT is co-editor of The Goose and a PhD candidate in literary studies at the University of Guelph. His dissertation addresses contemporary environmental justice writing. Beyond the academy, Alec has conducted field research for environmental NGOs and has volunteered with Vocamus Writers Community, an organization that works to support Guelph’s local literary culture.       MELANIE DENNIS UNRAU is a PhD candidate in English at the University of Manitoba and co-editor of The Goose. Her dissertation focuses on petropoetics—poetry written by humans about oil and the ways in which oil as poet has shaped our worlds, infrastructures, and cultures. Melanie is poetry editor of Geez magazine. She is a Sir Gordon Wu Scholar and a SSHRC Canada Graduate Scholar.  JULIEN DEFRAEYE est candidat au doctorat à l’Université de Waterloo, en Ontario, où il se consacre à l’écopoétique chez plusieurs auteurs québécois(es). Il a récemment publié ses recherches dans les revues Voix Plurielles et @nalyses, ainsi que dans plusieurs ouvrages collectifs. Il est directeur du contenu francophone de la revue The Goose et est fondateur et membre du comité éditorial de la plateforme collaborative culturelle Artis Natura. Il fait partie de plusieurs associations de recherches dont l’Association des Professeurs de Français des Universités et Collèges Canadiens (APFUCC), l’Association pour la Littérature Canadienne et Québécoise (ALCQ) et l’Association pour la Littérature, l’Environnement et la Culture au Canada (ALECC).   4The Goose, Vol. 16, No. 2 [2018], Art. 48https://scholars.wlu.ca/thegoose/vol16/iss2/48

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