Tag: forest

The Body, Biopolitics and Covid, The Night Forest Journal Issue 4 – Call For Howls

A repost of https://nightforestpoetry.wordpress.com/2021/07/30/the-body-biopolitics-and-covid-the-night-forest-journal-issue-4-call-for-howls

A howl erupts from the body, out into the world. From the flesh of the animal howling, its musicality rides the air, unseen but undeniably there.

A cough or a sneeze releases tiny particles of a disease named Covid-19 from the body, a presence that can ride upon the air and infect those who cannot see it, or deny its presence. It is not a friend to those animals it makes its host – perhaps it has become a friend to authoritarian governments however? Or has it been a monkeywrench in the machine, undermining political-narratives and creating issues for the state? Perhaps neither? Perhaps both? We do not pretend to know, with any quality of definiteness.

We know that we encounter the body as beautiful. We feel a desire for the bodily presence of living beings. If eroticism is assenting to life up to the point of death, as Bataille defines eroticism, there is an erotic quality to our life-desire. What does desire, eroticism, or love mean amidst a pandemic? Is this space that we find ourselves in the best or the worst space for love poetry? Again, we do not pretend to know.

For the fourth issue of The Night Forest Journal, we are asking for submissions on the body, biopolitics and Covid-19. As with previous issues, we will accept poems, essays, short stories and visual art for this project. Suggested areas of focus are –

Health and wellbeing

Bio-medical authoritarianism

Love, sex and desire in the pandemic

Free-love during lockdowns

Conspiracy and the art of seduction

Medicine-person praxis

Vaccine passports and (micro-)nationalism

We will publish up to 3 submissions from each contributor, but will consider any submissions sent to us. There is no limit in length of poems or essays. Submissions can be sent to us via nightforestpoetry@gmail.com or via our social-media presences. The deadline for submissions is the winter solstice 2021.

The Heroes of This Novel Are Centuries Old and 300 Feet Tall

THE OVERSTORY
By Richard Powers
502 pp. W.W. Norton & Company. $27.95.

Trees do most of the things you do, just more slowly. They compete for their livelihoods and take care of their families, sometimes making huge sacrifices for their children. They breathe, eat and have sex. They give gifts, communicate, learn, remember and record the important events of their lives. With relatives and non-kin alike they cooperate, forming neighborhood watch committees — to name one example — with rapid response networks to alert others to a threatening intruder. They manage their resources in bank accounts, using past market trends to predict future needs. They mine and farm the land, and sometimes move their families across great distances for better opportunities. Some of this might take centuries, but for a creature with a life span of hundreds or thousands of years, time must surely have a different feel about it.

And for all that, trees are things to us, good for tables, floors and ceiling beams: As much as we might admire them, we’re still happy to walk on their hearts. It may register as a shock, then, that trees have lives so much like our own. All the behaviors described above have been studied and documented by scientists who carefully avoid the word “behavior” and other anthropomorphic language, lest they be accused of having emotional attachments to their subjects.

LINK TO REST OF STORY: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/09/books/review/overstory-richard-powers.html

LIBGEN LINK: http://libgen.rs/book/index.php?md5=F6AA2C30BD11C9BE06D379C41119B979