The Estuary as Method: Embodied Filtration in Ecocritical Poetic Strategy

Document Type

Presentation

Date of Original Version

3-27-2026

Abstract

Applying the concept of water to a poem across a form-content relationship opens up endless possibilities for formal experimentation and engaging with water. I argue that the poem itself can be viewed within the lens of water, and use the estuary as a specific ecosystem case study; within its white space and lines, we can view the poem as having coastlines, tributaries, and depths. In this, water becomes an opportunity for engagement in poetry, not just as subject matter, but as method. Through examining different methods and embodiments of water, such as physical geographies, flow and fluidity, and filtration, I explore foundational form development and experimentation that has engaged with the estuary, and offer new possibilities for a formal framework and progression. Drawing on Forrest Gander’s Water and Ecopoetry selected collection, I investigate works from poets Stuart Cooke and Tracy K. Smith, to provide foundational examples and breadth of strategy in engaging with water in poetics. Drawing on the fields of blue humanities and interdisciplinary communications, I also offer a methodology for poetic form development that leverages ecological and biological phenomenon as a connecting point to understand bodies of water and the environments it inhabits. I examine filtration, from the urinary system in our own kidneys to oyster beds and erosion, as a critical example to posit new connections to poetic form, such as the erasure poem, through these environments as linkage points for understanding.

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