The ecopoetics of lichen | prof. Forrest Gander and prof. Anne Pringle

What happens when a poet, photographer, artist, and mycologist come together to work in Wisconsin at a research center in a very pristine forest? In short: magic. And a collection of (eco)poetry – a type of poetry that, according to one of our guests, investigates formally and thematically the relation between nature and culture, language and perception.

Today’s guests are Forrest Gander (Professor Emeritus at Brown University), a Pulitzer award-winning poet, and Anne Pringle (University of Wisconsin-Madison), a prominent mycologist. Even though their career paths seem completely different on the surface, they are both concerned with the climate crisis, ecology, and human relationship with nature. Can we, as humans, abandon our anthropocentric perspective when studying organisms that do not resemble us at all? What can organisms like lichen teach us about our interdependence? How does a poet express the multitudes of non-human subjectivities?

This episode is not only for poetry enthusiasts. Apart from talking about lyricism, metaphors, and postmodernism, we discuss the way in which science shapes our worldview and how lichens can provoke deep reflections on human intimacy and mortality.