A site-specific engagement with the ecosystem of Mnidoo Mnising (Manitoulin Island), Conversations with the Kagawong River raises the possibility of collaboration with the more-than-human. The author spent several years learning to listen to the Gaagigewang Ziibi (Kagawong River) and to follow the rhythms and patterns of its flora and fauna, the weather and the water. She invited various collaborators – woodpeckers, otters, currents, ice, grasses – to edit, compose, re- and decompose a series of alphabets made of paper and wood. The resulting poems make visible the colonial, environmental, and social processes that construct an ecosystem and (settler) relationships to it.

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

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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