Ornithologies of Desire: Ecocritical Essays, Avian Poetics, and Don McKay
About this ebook
The poetry and poetics of Don McKay provide Ornithologies of Desire with its primary subject matter, which is predicated on attention to ornithological knowledge and avian metaphors. This focus on birds enables a consideration of more broadly ecological relations and concerns, since an awareness of birds in their habitats insists on awareness of plants, insects, mammals, rocks, and all else that constitutes place. The book’s chapters are organized according to: apparatus (that is, science as ecocritical tool), flight, and song.
Reading McKay’s work alongside ecology and ornithology, through flight and birdsong, both challenges assumptions regarding humans’ place in the earth system and celebrates the sheer virtuosity of lyric poetry rich with associative as well as scientific details. The resulting chapters, interchapter, and concordance of birds that appear in McKay’s poetry encourage amateurs and specialists, birdwatchers and poetry readers, to reconsider birds in English literature on the page and in the field.
About the author
Travis V. Mason teaches English and Canadian studies at Dalhousie and Mount St. Vincent Universities. After completing his Ph.D. at the University of British Columbia, he studied ecopoetry in South Africa as a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow before moving to Halifax to study Canadian literary responses to science with a Killam Postdoctoral Fellowship. His articles have appeared in books and journals, including Canadian Literature, Studies in Canadian Literature, The Dalhousie Review, Kunapipi, and Mosaic.
