Plant Companion Field Guide: Poetry & Art for New(Old) Ecocultural Belonging

This presentation shares the Plant Companion Field Guide, a poet and artist collaboration that poses the questions: Can we together remember and imagine past and future lineages of earth-honoring practices of interspecies kinship and reciprocity? How can getting to know plants take part in transforming relationships to the land we inhabit, the traditional homelands of the Nimíipuu and Pelúuc, and to each other? How can acts of ecospheric care acknowledge ongoing legacies of colonial violence? What role can art play in cultivating knowledge of our ecologically and culturally entangled histories and futures? In poems, essayettes, identification keys, and thoughtful provocations, the Plant Companion Field Guide provides insight into plant–human relationships across time and space to inspire a reparative ethic of ecocultural belonging while uplifting Indigenous ancestral knowledge of place.