By situating ecology as an ontological position, this dissertation adapts Jan Zwicky’s notion of resonance to probe imagining as a complex collaborative process involving diverse emergent variables. As a practicing artist, writer, teacher and researcher, I combine theoretical research and (visual arts) practice-based research to posit a sense of imagining that is unsituatable. The structure of this dissertation is grounded in the form of the essay (as a “try” or an “attempt”) which adapts explanatory text, metaphorical text and visual elements as a way to expand qualitative practices that have engaged critically with the politics of accepted forms and structures of academic writing. The project is intended for an off-line format, as a series of six distinct yet interdependent hand-made books that focus on: (1) An Emergent Methodology; (2) Ontology, Form and a Reconstitution of the Individual; (3) Zwicky, Thisness, Ecology & Ontological Ethics; (4) Zwicky, Imagination and the Image; (5) An Envisioning of Imagining as a Resonant Ecological Process and lastly, (6) Moments of Engaging Eco-Imagining in the Post-Secondary Classroom. The research-writing expands a body of work, through visual-textual, theoretical-metaphorical form, to enact imagining as a resonant ecological process that unfolds through the emergence of a complex co-mingling of a deluge of variables. / Graduate

"Edge Effects: Poetry, Place, and Spiritual Practices” focusses on the intersection of the environmental and religious imaginations in the work of five West Coast poets: Robinson Jeffers, Theodore Roethke, Robert Hass, Denise Levertov, and Jan Zwicky. My research examines the selected poems for their reimagination of the sacred perceived through attachments to particular places. For these writers, poetry is a constitutive practice, part of a way of life that includes desire for wise participation in the more-than-human community. Taking into account the poets’ critical reflections and historical-cultural contexts, along with a range of critical and philosophical sources, the poetry is examined as a discursive spiritual exercise. It is seen as conjoined with other focal practices of place, notably meditative walking and attentive looking and listening under the influence of ecospiritual eros. My analysis attends to aesthetics of relinquishment, formal strategies employed to recognize and accept finitude and the non-anthropocentric nature of reality, along with the complementary aesthetics of affirmation, configuration of the goodness of the whole. I identify an orienting feature of West Coast place, particular to each poet, that recurs as a leitmotif for engagement of such aesthetics and related practices. In chapter one, I consider a group of Jeffers’s final poems as part of a project he designated “our De Natura,” attending especially to his affinity for stones and stars. In chapter two, I investigate both Roethke’s and Hass’s configurations of ecospiritual eros in accord with their fascination for flora, while in chapter three, I employ the concepts of “aura” and “resonance” to explicate Levertov’s meditations on the “coming and going” Mount Rainier-Tacoma and Zwicky’s reflective iterations of the sea. / Graduate / 2019-04-04

Recent work in the geohumanities has renewed a call for the inclusion of creative work within the discipline of geography. This dissertation works both creatively and critically to answer that call, and to contribute to the geohumanities generally and the subfield of geopoetics particularly. In the theoretical portion of this work, I draw from and dialogue with creative geographies, emotional geographies, nonrepresentational theory, and post-human geographies, arguing that geopoetics is both theory and practice-based and focuses on how to apprehend the world, how to acknowledge and practice the act of perceiving, and the relationship that grows through the act of perceiving and being perceived. This attendance is an ethical act; it helps to enrich understandings of place and of human relationships to the world. I use this understanding of geopoetics to rethink relationships to place through the embrace of poetic technique, an ethics of care, and an acceptance of situated, autobiographical emotion in practice. I use the work of three philosopher-poets (McKay, Zwicky, Lilburn) to argue that geopoetics is a relational ontology that helps contribute culturally to embodied understandings of ethics, landscape, and environment through its practice of attendance and perception. Separately, all three writers contribute variously to conceptualizations of wilderness, home and place; together, I propose that their work serves to further define geopoetics through the manner by which one attends to the world. I also specifically use Zwicky’s work on lyric to intervene in non-representational theory, clarifying ideas on a body-in-the-world. Attendance, for me, involves emotional, sensory, and philosophical engagement but is focused on the world, not on the perceiver. The creative portion of this dissertation puts the theoretical work into practice, adding to understandings of what geopoetics might do. This creative work is an act of attendance, which has as its root a geography of love and an emphasis on how to perceive. Its inclusion further validates creative practice and the inclusion of creative professionals within the discipline of geography. / Graduate / 2022-08-25

Résumé : Musicienne et traductrice de formation et de métier, je présente ici des traductions de poèmes contemporains qui s’annoncent, par leur titre ou leur forme, comme des fugues. Comme hypothèse de départ, je pose la possibilité du transfert des éléments de fugue musicale à ceux de la fugue littéraire. Ma démarche se décline en deux parties. Dans un premier temps, j’analyse les poèmes en suivant pas à pas la méthode de critique des traductions littéraires d’Antoine Berman. La méthode est adaptée à la traduction intersémiotique et rend compte des éléments de fugue contenus dans chacun des poèmes à l’étude. Dans un second temps, une fois le « projet de traduction » bien établi, je propose une traduction française des fugues-poèmes. Dans l’esprit de ce que Barbara Folkart nomme des « traductions d’auteur », dans le rendu proposé, je m’éloigne des approches dénotatives, tentant de réactualiser en français la démarche compositionnelle des poètes. Que retiendront les poètes pour leur projet de fugue-poème? Une confusion est-elle possible avec d’autres formes répétitives, comme le canon, le thème et variations, le ground, la chaconne, la passacaille, voire des formes de musique minimaliste? Malgré les appréhensions d’un certain nombre de critiques, qui taxent de « vaines » toute expérience intersémiotique ou toute tentative pour en démontrer les correspondances, on trouve quelques exemples probants de fugues littéraires. Bien entendu, la musique ne peut se traduire directement en mots. En s’attardant aux phénomènes perceptuels et créatifs, on accède à un degré correct de pertinence. Je me suis donné pour méthodologie le modèle de critique des traductions littéraires d’Antoine Berman, dont j’ai fait l’ossature des chapitres et auquel j’ai greffé des grilles d’analyse paradigmatique et rythmique. J’ai aussi eu recours à un pense-bête des principaux éléments fugaux (constituants de la fugue musicale, définitions de « fugue » dans la langue courante et critères psychiatriques de la « fugue dissociative »). Un questionnaire maison a été le point de départ de mon travail de collaboration avec les poètes. Dans le cas de Paul Celan (1920-1970), j’ai utilisé le même questionnaire, que j’ai rempli au gré de l’analyse et du dépouillement d’autres recherches. J’explore dans les six premiers chapitres les poèmes « Todesfuge » (1945) de Paul Celan, « Night Thoughts on Clauzewitz’s On War » (1986) d’E. D. Blodgett, « Lives of the Great Composers » (1983) de Dana Gioia, « Domestic Fugues » (2009) de Richard Newman, « Art of Fugue » (2011) de Jan Zwicky » et « Arugula fugues » (2001) d’Adeena Karasick. Dans la conclusion, je discute les résultats de recherche, les choix méthodologiques et le processus de traduction. Un tableau-synthèse des correspondances fugales est aussi présenté et commenté. Le chapitre intitulé « Stretto » vient élargir le corpus des fugues-poèmes analysées et traduites. J’y présente les fugues-poèmes suivantes : « Fugue » et « Round » de Weldon Kees, « Fugue in Cold and Rain » et « Little Fugue of Love and Death » de Richard Newman, « The Praying Mantis » d’Annie Charlotte Dalton Armitage, « The Ballad of the Pink-Brown Fence » de Milton Acorn, « The Children are Laughing » de Gwendolyn MacEwen, « And the Season Advances » d’Herménégilde Chiasson (dans une traduction de Jo-Anne Elder et de Fred Cogswell), « Fugue » de Robyn Sarah, « Fugue » du Kaddish d’Allen Ginsberg, « Fugue » de Neville Dawes, « Seaside Canon » de Julia Galef et « Stretto » de Don MacKay. // Abstract : As a professional musician and translator, I am presenting my translations of contemporary poems that are, either through their titles or their forms, fugue-poems. It is my hypothesis that elements present in a musical fugue can be transferred to a literary fugue. There are two parts to my research. First, I analyze the poems in strict accordance with Antoine Berman’s critical method for literary translation. I adapted the method in order to work with inter-semiotic translation, as well as the fugal elements contained in each of the poems studied. Next, with the “translation project” well established, I propose a French translation of the fugue-poems. Based on Barbara Folkart’s notion of “writerly translations,” I will attempt to capture the essence of the poems and recreate true works of literary art in French, rather than using purely denotative translation methods. Which elements do poets employ in their fugue-poems? Is there a possibility of confusing fugal elements with other repetitive forms, such as a canon, a theme and variations, a ground bass, a chaconne, a passacaglia or even certain forms of minimalist music? Despite the apprehension of some critics, who believe that inter-semiotic work or even the attempt to reveal any form of relationship is in vain, there are a number of clear examples of literary fugues. Naturally, music cannot translate directly into words. However, a study of the perceptual and creative phenomena allows us to make the connection. My research methodology is based on Antoine Berman’s model meant for critics of literary translations, which provides the backbone for the chapters in this presentation, and to which I have added a paradigmatic and rhythmic analysis grid. I also used a memory aid of the principal fugal elements (components of a musical fugue, definitions of a “fugue” in common usage, and the characteristics of the psychiatric disorder referred to as “dissociative fugue”). I designed a questionnaire, which I used as the basis for my collaboration with the poets. In the case of Paul Celan (1920-1970), I used the same questionnaire, which I filled out based on my analysis of his work, as well as analyses put forth by other researchers. In the first six chapters, I explore the following poems: “Todesfuge” (1945) by Paul Celan, “Night Thoughts on Clauzewitz’s On War” (1986) by E. D. Blodgett, “Lives of the Great Composers” (1983) by Dana Gioia, “Domestic Fugues” (2009) by Richard Newman, “Art of Fugue” (2011) by Jan Zwicky and “Arugula fugues” (2001) by Adeena Karasick. In the conclusion, I discuss the research results, the methodological choices and the translation process. I have also included a summary table (with comments) of the corresponding fugal elements. The chapter entitled “Stretto” concludes the corpus of analyzed and translated fugue-poems. It includes: “Fugue ” and “Round” by Weldon Kees, “Fugue in Cold and Rain” and “Little Fugue of Love and Death” by Richard Newman, “The Praying Mantis” by Annie Charlotte Dalton Armitage, “The Ballad of the Pink- Brown Fence” by Milton Acorn, “The Children are Laughing” by Gwendolyn MacEwen, “And the Season Advances” by Herménégilde Chiasson (translation by Jo-Anne Elder and Fred Cogswell), “Fugue” by Robyn Sarah, “Fugue” from Kaddish by Allen Ginsberg, “Fugue” by Neville Dawes, “Seaside Canon” by Julia Galef and “Stretto” by Don MacKay.