Conversations with the Kagawong River poses questions about language, the boundaries of authorship and readership, and the possibility of collaboration with the more-than-human. A site-specific engagement with a local ecosystem, it makes visible the colonial, environmental, and social processes that construct an ecosystem and (settler) relationships to it.

The author spent several years on the Kagawong River, learning to listen and follow the rhythms and patterns of its flora and fauna, the weather and the water. In response to her observations, she installed a series of alphabets made of paper and wood to act as invitations for various “agents” – woodpeckers, otters, currents, ice, grasses – to edit, compose, re- and decompose. This book shares the documentation of these poems, some that changed and disintegrated in a few seconds, others that morphed over months.

Supported by local Elders, language speakers, and historians, Conversations with the Kagawong River highlights Mnidoo Mnising | Manitoulin Island Treaty history while asking whether leaving behind known and dominant languages might engender new forms of language and longing. Might new relationships emerge from a different way of seeing and writing the world?

Includes an Anishinaabemowin river glossary and reproductions of the Indigenous historical plaques installed throughout the Billings Township and along the Kagawong River.

Sophie Anne Edwards (she/her/settler) lives on Mnidoo Mnising | Manitoulin Island in Northeastern Ontario with her dog Bea and a roster of other WWOOfers who help in the garden. Her writing has been generously supported by the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council and published by numerous journals and micro presses across Canada. Sophie holds an MA in Interdisciplinary Studies, a SSHRC-funded Ph.D. (ABD) in geography from Queen's University, and a Certificate in Creative Writing from Humber College.

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