ABSTRACT
This chapter offers preliminary coordinates for understanding the complex relation between birds and poetry in a way that acknowledges the material and semiotic self-sufficiency and agential power of birds, as well as their affective presence in physical and textual environments. It conceptualizes bird poetry as a natural cultural phenomenon and describes the multicomparational method of reading. The chapter focuses on avian affects to explain affect as an experiential, emotion-evoking event and trace it in Lyyvuo's poetry and in encounters between different species. In environmental humanities, the question of affect is usually discussed in the context of anthropogenic environmental problems. Questions concerning animals and their cultural representations, or, more generally, cultural engagements with the non-human, have stimulated a considerable amount of theoretical and critical interest. The feminist philosopher and historian of science Donna Haraway has written about mutually constitutive relationships between humans and non-humans and about animal representation as dependent on real animals.
