Environmental crises in Kerala, Adelaide, and beyond: A collaborative poetic inquiry

Abstract

The earth presently suffers multiple anthropogenic (human-affected) environmental crises. Broad scale global issues like climate change now receive relatively high public attention, but need remains to look closely at localised problems and to enact dialogues about how environmental crisis manifests across differing geographical sites. Fusing the creative and collaborative techniques of research methodologies including duoethnography, poetic inquiry, and writing-as-research, this article stages an exchange through which two poets, one based in Kerala, India, the other in Adelaide, Australia, respond to one another’s writings about local environmental issues. In drawing on feminist and ecofeminist theories in connection with Félix Guatari’s work on the ‘three ecologies’, the article probes interconnections between environmental and social issues including but exceeding the ongoing effects of invasion or colonisation in both our countries; the insufficiencies of official responses to catastrophes; oppression and privilege based on gender and intersecting factors; the globalised capitalist economy; and more.