ABSTRACT
In the French-language sphere, ecopoetics is a relatively recent development compared to other languages in which the field has flourished. In the French-speaking context, however, it has dominated the broader discipline of ecocriticism. This essay will explore some of the reasons for the comparatively late development of ecopoetics in France, while noting some of the prominent forerunners such as Bruno Latour and Michel Serres. As it emerged full-fledged in the early twenty-first century in France and Belgium (with both the first monograph and special journal issue dedicated to the subject appearing in 2015 with Pierre Schoentjes as their author and co-editor, respectively). At the time, however, it was not yet clear how ecopoetics was conceived as being distinct from “ecocriticism.” Since then, the working group Atelier de recherche en écopoétique, écocritique, et écoanthropologie centered at the Université de Perpignan Via Domitia, has taken up the institutional mantle of ecopoetics, and their work has established the ways in which it is not just a critical discourse examining the ways in which the creative work is born from a relationship to the environment. It is also a creative practice, prompting reflection by geographers, urban planners, and other creative fields on how their production of landscapes can contribute to our understanding of our interaction with nature as a poetics and poeisis. Ecopoetics in France, in focusing on that poietic practice, have also focused on the ethical dimension of an ecologically oriented criticism and on the “echoic” dimension, or the ways in which the material sound dimensions of the poetic function.
