Options
Title
Which to Become? Encountering Fungi in Australian Poetry
Fields of Research (FoR) 2008:
Author(s)
Publication Date
2012
Open Access
Yes
Abstract
As a largely unexplored group of organisms, fungi are ecologically complex members of the Australian biota. Fungi represent non-human alterity and interstitiality-neither animal not plant, beautiful yet evanescent, slimy and lethal, and eliding scientific categorisations. Donna Haraway's notion of 'companion species' and Anna Tsing's 'arts of inclusion' remind us that sensory entanglements are intrinsic to human-fungi relations. Drawing conceptually from Haraway and Tsing, this paper will examine examples of poetry from John Shaw Neilson, Jan Owen, Douglas Stewart, Geoffrey Dutton, Caroline Caddy, Michael Dransfield, Philip Hodgins, Jaime Grant and John Kinsella that represent sensory involvements with fungi based in smell, sound, taste and touch. For Stewart, the crimson fungus is archetypal of danger, ontologically ambivalent and warranting physical distance. For Caddy and Dransfield, fungi are nutriment around which social and personal events transpire, whereas for Kinsella, fungi express concisely-as part of an ecological milieu-nature's dynamic alterity.
Publication Type
Journal Article
Source of Publication
Rupkatha Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities, 4(2), p. 132-143
Publisher
Tarun Tapas Mukherjee
Place of Publication
India
ISSN
0975-2935
Fields of Research (FoR) 2020
Socio-Economic Objective (SEO) 2020
Peer Reviewed
Yes
HERDC Category Description
Peer Reviewed
Yes
Statistics to Oct 2018:
Visitors: 9<br />Views: 10<br />Downloads: 0
Permanent link to this record