University of Tasmania
Browse

File(s) under permanent embargo

Poe(trees) of Place: Forest Poetics in Lithuania and Tasmania

journal contribution
posted on 2023-05-18, 10:58 authored by Claire McCarthy
Analysing the poetic ecology of the forest as a cultural landscape offers insight into ecocritical consciousness. This article compares Lithuanian national and Tasmanian colonial poetics, and examines post-colonial poetry linked to the Tasmanian conservation movement. Starting in nineteenth century Lithuania under Russian rule, this article examines The Forest of Anykščiai by Antanas Baranauskas in English translation. The poem, a national anthem to a cleared forest, reconstructs an entire ecosystem and imbues it with Lithuanian mythology. In this way, the poem re-inscribes Lithuanian forests as nationally significant, and inextricably linked to culture, sense of place and the struggle against Russian colonisation and imperialism. Nature becomes a nationally unifying symbol and forests in particular are represented as cultural landscapes. In far away Tasmania, the island state of Australia, a violent colonial past has also been unfolded in the setting of extensive forests. In nineteenth century Tasmania, however, the forest poetics were written by members of the colonising power, people who saw forests as hostile, dangerous places, and whose political agenda included the social legitimisation of the invasion of inhabited lands. Therefore, in many examples of Tasmanian colonial poetry, the representation of Nature as silent and empty of life deletes the ecological presence of forest. The silencing of the forest neatly accompanied the denial of any indigenous history of the land. This has had the effect of enacting the colonial doctrine of terra nullius and participating in a literature of indigenous “extinction.” More recently, a post-colonial re-awakening of the sound and breath of organic forest ecologies has occurred in poetry associated with the Tasmanian conservation movement. There has also been a deliberate re-inscription of indigenous history in post-colonial poetics that includes human interaction with Nature as part of an environmentally sustainable vision for the future.

History

Publication title

Journal of Ecocriticism

Pagination

42-54

ISSN

1916-1549

Department/School

School of Humanities

Publisher

Department of English, University of British Columbia

Place of publication

Canada

Rights statement

Copyright 2009 Journal of Ecocriticism

Repository Status

  • Restricted

Socio-economic Objectives

Communication across languages and culture

Usage metrics

    University Of Tasmania

    Exports

    RefWorks
    BibTeX
    Ref. manager
    Endnote
    DataCite
    NLM
    DC