Date: Friday, October 30th, 2026
Location: Paris 8 University, Maison de la recherche, Amphitheatre MR002
Traditions of ecological and nature writing and poetry about place and the nonhuman vary widely between different countries, cultures, and literary traditions. In the same way, the representation of nature and of relationships between humans and nonhumans in British and French poetry, and more broadly in literatures in English and in French, is marked by important differences, as is the place of ‘nature’ and of the human-nonhuman relationship in these different cultures.
Organised by John Sannaee (Postdoctoral Researcher, TransCrit research unit, Paris 8 University) and Claire Joubert (Professor of English and Comparative Literature, TransCrit research unit, Paris 8 University), as part of TransCrit’s research group ‘Imaginer les communautés’, the Study Day ‘Ecopoetry: Compared Perspectives’ will bring together researchers and students working on and in literatures from the English- and French-speaking worlds. International and interdisciplinary, this day will compare and contrast the wide variety of research and literary, theoretical, and socio-cultural frameworks from and on ecopoetry in the two languages.
As such, we welcome papers that allow for a comparison of ecopoetics in different contemporary contexts, as well as papers contrasting perspectives on the traditions that have shaped them, and papers examining the contexts of contemporary ecopoetry’s writing and reception.
The study day will notably focus on ecopoetry in postcolonial and postmigratory contexts, as ultra-contemporary situations in which different types of oppression and their legacies overlap and/or accumulate. Thus, we hope that this day will ask urgently pressing questions in which poetry can play a role. Numerous postcolonial ecopoets and ecopoems examine the climate crisis and question the relationship between humans and nonhumans. In particular, ecopoetry has the potential to explore poetically the consequences both of colonial exploitation and of colonial and postcolonial literary representation of humans and nonhumans in a wide range of places and environments from across our postcolonial globalised world.
Several panels on different themes have been envisaged, all of which aim to be as multicultural and multilingual as possible. Comparison, exchange, and transfers are central to the aims and potential of this study day, which will be complemented by a creative writing workshop and a keynote speech from a contemporary ecopoet.
Submission Guidelines
The Study Day will be bilingual, and papers are welcomed in both English and French.
Please send your proposals by June 10th, 2026, to [email protected]. Your submission should include:
- A title and abstract of around 200 words
- A brief biobibliography (no more than 50 words)
Themes
- Climate crisis poetics
- Ecopoetry, place, identity, and belonging
- Human – nonhuman relationships
- Poetic representation of the human and nonhuman other
- Ecopoetry and the postmigratory world
- Postcolonial ecopoetry
- Compared perspectives on ecology and poetry in British, French, Anglophone, and Francophone cultures
- International and transnational ecopoetic comparisons, in, between, and beyond the English-speaking and French-speaking worlds
Suggested Reading
- Abberley, Will, et al., Modern British Nature Writing (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022)
- Alaimo, Stacy, Exposed (Minneapolis & London: University of Minnesota Press, 2016)
- Allen-Paisant, Jason, The Possibility of Tenderness (London: Hutchinson Heinemann, 2025)
- Becket, Fiona, Ecopoetics and Poetry in The Cambridge Companion to British Poetry 1945-2010 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016)
- Bennett, Jane, Vibrant Matter (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010)
- Bouttier, Sarah, An Ecopoetics of Agency (London: Bloomsbury, 2026)
- Bristow, Tom, The Anthropocene Lyric (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015)
- Collot, Michel, Le Chant du monde dans la poésie française contemporaine (Paris: Corti, 2019)
- ELFe XX-XXI, no. 11 (2022), ‘Ruptures écocritiques, à l’avant-garde’, Penot-Lacassagne, Olivier, ed.
- Glissant, Édouard, Poétique de la relation (Paris: Gallimard, 1990)
- Haraway, Donna, Staying With Trouble (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2016)
- Huggan, Graham, and Tiffin, Helen, Postcolonial Ecocriticism (London: Routledge, 2010)
- Latour, Bruno, Politiques de la nature (Paris: La Découverte, 1999)
- Littérature no. 201 (2021), ‘Zones à dire. Pour une écopoétique transculturelle’, Colin, Armand, ed.
- Moudileno, Lydie, ‘Écopoésie de la Caraïbe (Monchoachi, le lieu)’, in Bonhomme, Béatrice, Castro, Idoli et Lloze, Évelyne, ed., Dire le réel aujourd’hui en poésie (Paris: Hermann, 2016)
- Pierre Schoentjes, Ce qui a lieu. Essai d’écopoétique (Marseille: Wildproject, 2015)
- Anne Simon, Une bête entre les lignes. Essai de zoopoétique (Marseille: Wildproject, 2021)
- Solnick, Sam, Poetry and the Anthropocene: Ecology, biology and technology in contemporary British and Irish poetry (London: Routledge, 2016)
- Yusoff, Karen, A Billion Black Anthropocenes or None (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2018)
