[update: I’ve been elected! Thanks for your support!]

I’ve been nominated for the Graduate Student Liaison role at ASLE (Association for Literature and the Environment) and would love your support! Current ASLE members can vote in the election until. Dec. 1. Check your emails or ASLE accounts for the link. Below is my statement. You can read the other candidates’ statements here.

Kristin George Bagdanov, University of California, Davis

We have all chosen to study literature and the environment because we believe that close and sustained attention to the world and its representations matters. And judging by the conferences I’ve attended in Moscow and Detroit, it is clear that the energy, collaboration, and criticism fostered by ASLE can effect change. As a third-year English PhD student at U.C. Davis who studies ecopoetics, I rely on the inspiration gleaned from ASLE on those days when theory feels very far from praxis. As graduate student liaison, I will help cultivate the ASLE community and the future of environmental scholarship by creating more opportunities for graduate students to collaborate with one another. Having started my studies in ecopoetics as a poet in Colorado State University’s MFA program, I am especially interested in strengthening ties between creative writers and literary critics, who have so much to learn from one another in terms of method, archive, and action. I also hope to create more workshops and reading groups for graduate students between conferences, expanding and strengthening the network of environmental scholarship across disciplines. As a scholar, poet, editor, and teacher with a background in non-profit development, I am equipped to manage both the logistical and creative tasks required of me in this role. An added bonus: since the ASLE 2019 conference will be at U.C. Davis, I’ll be able to tailor the graduate student conference experience to our specific campus and community. Find out more about my work at kristingeorgebagdanov.com or on Twitter: @KristinGeorgeB.

A Review of Jamaal May’s HUM (Alice James Books, 2013)

Read my review of Jamaal May’s Hum over at 32 Poems.

Excerpt:

The repeated image of the needle invites the reader to investigate how such objects, and the places and people they represent, become patterns that bind together that which frays. This collection asks: What can be salvaged from a city or a person that has been punctured, dragged, forgotten? A needle can mend a wound or open a vein. A needle can also translate the grooves of a record into song; needles can bring “light through drawn blinds” and “wind through a window’s failing”; “old factories needle / into the sky” (“The Hum of Zug Island”).