sophie anne edwards : leavings : returns

 from Report from the Siklosi Society, Vol. 1, No. 1

 

 

 

 

 

samarae from the ash trees around my house and along the access road flutter to the ground throughout the fall and early winter. an ash produces seed every five to seven years, or when it is diseased. i collect and label the seed from six different trees to send to the national seed bank. pecking the seed from the samara, a flock of pine siskins feed from the trees over the month of january. this particular ash, from which i collect these samarae, has a wide split along one side of its trunk, and is hollow on the other. it will be felled in march, when the weather warms. the treescape will change with this loss. soon the emerald ash borer will make its way here. the canopy will change, the food source, shade and shelter of these towering, broad limbed trees will be gone. a loss inextricably connected to globalization, and the pallets of consumerism. i think of Kate’s Sikloski’s work, leavings, and what we leave behind. the traces of our hands. the hope, perhaps futile, in a gentle practice of returns.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

sophie anne edwards (she/her/settler) is an environmental artist/geopoet based on Manitoulin Island (Mnidoo Mnising, Anishinaabeg Territory). She works with and through text, textile, drawing, and natural materials, often engaged with site-specific and installation practices, to explore the intersections of language, gender, colonization, and environment. Her work is supported by the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council, and has appeared in Room Magazine, Arc Poetry Magazine, and The Capilano Review among others. Gap Riot Press and Blasted Tree Press have published, respectively, a chapbook and videopoems, and a series of visual poem postcards. She was long-listed for the 2021 CBC Poetry Prize; and has attended residencies at the Purdy A-Frame, Banff and Sage Hill. Having finished her first full-length book of ephemeral and site-specific poetry ‘Interview with a river’, she is working on two new projects with funding from the Canada Council.