Living rivers : an ecopoetics of mutuality and flow : b a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Creative Writing at Massey University, New Zealand. EMBARGOED until 2nd May 2028
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2025
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Massey University
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This Master’s thesis examines relationships with rivers in order to explore the porosity between our shared, animate lifeworlds. It asks how language and the praxis of ecopoiesis can be used to acknowledge this relationship and explores how an ethic of care, gratitude, reciprocity and respect contributes to it. Situated within ecocriticism, and drawing on ecofeminist critical theory, this thesis uses both critical and creative enquiry to dwell in the following questions: What is my relationship with rivers? How can language and literature be used to reveal mutualities between rivers and humans? How does my desire for whitewater kayaking and re-creation help or hinder rivers? What do New Zealand’s laws and policies offer in the way of protecting the health of rivers? Is a rights-based framing of rivers enough? What does a kinship approach offer? What do rivers teach us? And importantly - what does a river want? The critical portion of the thesis uses a literature review to explore ecofeminist critical theory and embodied enquiry, and examines the interrelated theories of ecocriticism, ecopoetics and ecopoiesis. It delves into worlding and contrasts rights-based framings with a kinship approach. It investigates a grammar of animacy and enquires into the history and strengths of the lyric essay – the chosen form for five of the six creative pieces which follow the critical enquiry. Overall, I argue that the praxis of ecopoiesis - the conscious practice of being with and alongside the living world and beholding this through language - both illuminates and amplifies the value and importance of our relationships with the living world. In a time increasingly riven by difference, to be-held by and be-hold the living world, to re-cover and re-learn connections and to embrace a grammar of animacy is one way of building stories of care.
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Embargoed until 2nd May 2028