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This article explores poet Mark Strand’s facet as an art critic and, more specifically, the way in which the pictorial universe of American painter Edward Hopper influenced his own poetry, both thematically and stylistically. Reading Hopper’s well-known oil on canvas House by the Railroad (1925) in a New York Times article entitled “Crossing the Tracks to Hopper’s World,” published on 17 October 1971, Strand dwells on “Hopper’s fascination with passage” (340). Years later, he would expand his critical exegesis of House by the Railroad and other canvasses by the American painter in a book-length essay titled Hopper (1994) in ways that are expressive of his own poetics. Both Strand and Hopper look at the world with an inquisitive gaze and capture moments in time with utter clarity to show that the self is a mystery and humans are transients yearning for a moment of revelation, a momentary stay against confusion.

Reseña de: T. S. Eliot: La tierra baldía, trad. Natalia Carbajosa, con la colaboración de Mª Teresa Gibert y Viorica Patea, ed. biling. Viorica Patea, Madrid, Cátedra (colección “Letras universales”, nº 587), 2022, ISBN: 978-84-376-4498-1, 412 pp.

Focusing on Canadian poet Sue Goyette’s collection Solstice 2020. An Archive (2021), this article examines how dealing with the effects of a global pandemic through the medium of poetry can act as a powerful catalyst in raising awareness about collective vulnerability and mourning. During the locked-down days of 2020, Goyette felt it was her responsibility as a poet to find words to convey the sense of shared vulnerability people experienced in the face of a momentous event that confined them to their homes for days on end. Drawing on vulnerability theory, ecophilosopher David Abram’s thinking on the more-than-human world, Stacy Alaimo’s concept of trans - corporeality, as well as on recent theorizations on the COVID-19 pandemic, this article argues that Goyette’s Solstice 2020 is a most interesting sociological document that represents collective vulnerability, testifies to the conundrums posed by the still ongoing pandemic, and makes visible the deep affinities between humankind and the more-than-human world.

El presente artículo ofrece una lectura ecocrítica de La tierra baldía y sostiene que la obra magna de Eliot puede ser interpretada como un ecopoema que anticipa los males del Antropoceno, como ponen de manifiesto las múltiples referencias a la degradación medioambiental provocada por el ser humano y al detrito generado por nuestra especie. Tras la Gran Guerra, en medio de la desintegración de la mente de Europa en un mundo cada vez más secularizado, Eliot trata de encontrar solaz no solo en el espíritu, sino también en el mundo más que humano que encarnan las montañas, el agua y el canto de un ave que emula el sonido del agua que cae. Con todo, tal y como lo concibe Eliot, el mundo más que humano está teñido de lo transcendente y divino, pues su ecologismo es de una naturaleza profundamente ética y espiritual. This article offers an ecocritical reading of The Waste Land, arguing that Eliot’s magnum opus can be read as an ecopoem that anticipates the woes of the Anthropocene, finding evidence for this in the many references to the human-induced environmental degradation and anthropogenic detritus that are scattered throughout the poem. In the aftermath of the Great War, amidst the disintegration of the mind of Europe in an increasingly secularised world, Eliot strives to find solace not only in the spirit, but also in the more-than-human world as represented by mountains, water and birdsong that emulates the sound of dripping water. Yet in Eliot’s conceptualisation, the more-than-human world is tinged with the transcendent and the divine, as his ecologism is deeply ethical and spiritual.

Nieprzebrana ubogość przestrzeni w Broken Vessel Harrego Thurstona W styczniu i lutym 2000 roku kanadyjski poeta-naturalista Harry Thurston (ur. 1950) spędził 35 dni na Saharze, towarzysząc grupie archeologów badających Oazę Dachla. Skonfrontowany z bezmiarem terytorium jednocześnie obcego i znajomego, postanowił odpowiedzieć na doświadczenie życia na pustyni za pomocą serii krótkich wierszy, które pisał każdego dnia pobytu na Saharze. Owocem tego duchowego doświadczenia jest tom Broken Vessel (2007), w którym autor próbuje oddać tajemnicę pustyni – przestrzeni, która fascynuje ludzką wyobraźnię od stulecia. Odwołując się do rozróżnienia przestrzeń-miejsce (Tuan), koncepcji tętniącej materii (Bennett), oraz ekokrytycznej idei, w myśl której ekopoezja może być postrzegana jako tworzenie miejsca, artykuł omawia spostrzeżenia Thurstona na temat świata bardziej-niż-ludzkiego, którego przykładem jest pustynia.

Widely acclaimed as one of the best living Canadian authors, Tim Bowling has cultivated several literary genres with great talent and verbal craftsmanship. He has published twelve poetry collections to date, two works of creative non-fiction, and five novels, including Downriver Drift (2000), The Paperboy’s Winter (2003), The Bone Sharps (2007), The Tinsmith (2012) and The Heavy Bear (2017). This article explores the epistemological power of Bowling’s fiction as a mode of knowing the self and the nonhuman environment. More specifically, bearing in mind fundamental ecocritical tenets, it analyses how his two earliest novels, Downriver Drift and The Paperboy’s Winter, evoke notions of dwelling and a compelling sense of place, as the natural environment in them is much more than mere backdrop to the narratives unfolding in their respective plots. Written in elegantly wrought language rich in poetic resonance, Bowling’s novels remind their readership that fiction is a powerful tool to investigate the human condition and our surrounding world, where the human and the nonhuman coexist on democratic terms. Aclamado como uno de los mejores autores canadienses vivos, Tim Bowling ha cultivado diversos géneros literarios con gran talento y pericia. Cuenta en su haber con doce poemarios hasta la fecha, dos obras de escritura creativa y cinco novelas, Downriver Drift (2000), The Paperboy’s Winter (2003), The Bone Sharps (2007), The Tinsmith (2012) y The Heavy Bear (2017). Este artículo explora el poder de la narrativa de Bowling como vehículo de conocimiento del ser y del mundo natural. Concretamente, partiendo de premisas esenciales de la ecocrítica, analiza cómo sus dos primeras novelas, Downriver Drift y The Paperboy’s Winter, evocan nociones de lo que entraña habitar un espacio y recrean la presencia del lugar, pues el entorno natural en ellas es mucho más que un mero telón de fondo de las historias que relatan. Escritas en un lenguaje elegante y preñado de resonancias poéticas, las novelas de Bowling nos recuerdan a los lectores que la narrativa es una poderosísima herramienta que nos permite investigar la condición humana y la realidad circundante, donde lo humano y lo no humano coexisten a la par.

This article examines the poetry and thinking of Robert Bringhurst, a 21st-century Canadian humanist who denounces the depletion of natural resources and environmental degradation brought about by ...

Canadian poet Erin Brubacher’s In the Small Hours is a sequence of sparse poems which focus on the experiences and emotions underwent by the author in the aftermath of her divorce. Interspersed with memories from the past and encounters with the vitality of domestic objects, the collection shows the poetic persona making sense of her life and the world in meditative lyrics of great brevity. Drawing on Jane Bennett’s conceptualisation of “vibrant matter,” this article explores how Brubacher responds to the thing-power circulating within and around the bodies populating the Earth, whilst acknowledging a sense of communion with the more-than-human world.

espanolCompuesta en respuesta a varios poetas de distintas lenguas, “The Lyell Island Variations” es una de las secuencias poeticas mas ambiciosas del canadiense Robert Bringhurst. Consta de nueve poemas que constituyen, en palabras del propio autor, “un album de meras traducciones equivocadas,” reunidas bajo el nombre de una de las islas de Haida Gwaii, archipielago situado frente a las costas de Alaska y la Columbia Britanica, y hogar de los haidas, uno de los pueblos nativos de America del Norte. Los poemas traducidos rinden homenaje a poetas insignes de diversas tradiciones literarias, como ponen de manifiesto las citas en distintas lenguas que preceden a cada uno de los poemas a modo de portico textual. Este articulo indaga como, en “The Lyell Island Variations,” el poeta trata de rescatar visiones y fragmentos de sabiduria de la mano de voces que hablan diversas lenguas humanas, a la par que trata de hacer una aportacion relevante a la tradicion literaria. EnglishWritten in response to various poets writing in different languages, “The Lyell Island Variations” is one of the most ambitious poem sequences in Canadian poet Robert Bringhurst’s entire literary corpus. The sequence consists of nine poems that constitute, in the poet’s words, “an album of mere mistranslations,” brought together under the name of an island in Haida Gwaii, an archipelago off the coast of Alaska and British Columbia and home to the Haida, one of the native peoples of North America. The translations pay homage to a number of pre-eminent poets from several literary traditions, as the use of textual thresholds in different languages found in the epigraphs preceding each single poem makes clear. This article explores how, in “The Lyell Island Variations,” the poet is trying to rescue remnants of visions and tattered fragments of wisdom from voices speaking different human languages, while making a relevant contribution to literary tradition.

Canadian poet Robert Bringhurst found inspiration for New World Suite No. 3, a complex poem for three voices in four movements, in the natural polyphony of the Earth and in the vast world of polyph...

This article deals with Obelisk (2017), a poetry collection by Canadian Susan Gillis (b. 1959) concerned with the impact of human action on Earth in a myriad of forms. Drawing on a wide spectrum of poets, thinkers and artists, including Du Fu, Czeslaw Milosz, Walter Benjamin, John Dixon Hunt, Don McKay, Xi Chuan and Edward Burtynsky, Obelisk looks like an essay in fragments where Gillis assembles the precious insights of her ancestors to shed light on homo sapiens’ intromission into physical space to make the Earth suit human needs. When put together, her heavily annotated and erudite poems read like a denunciation of the indelible mark humans are leaving on the face of the Earth to make it a habitable space, whilst destroying it in the process. However, there is room in Obelisk for a probing reflection on wilderness and place, for a celebration of the vitality of matter and the more-than-human world, for an environmentally-informed critique of the way human action is having a colossal impact on the planet in the age of the Anthropocene, and for a meditation on what poetry can do in the light of environmental degradation to encourage humanity to act and live responsibly on Earth. Thus, Obelisk warns readers against the destruction of the biosphere and celebrates the persistente of poetry as a mode of knowing and as a tool for fashioning an environmental ethics.

The so-called language gap is not a modern invention, since language is power and a form of taking dominion over the world in humans' intellectual confrontation with reality. Historically, there has been inequality in language learning and mastery as a way to access knowledge and to achieve self-fulfillment in both the public and private spheres. This chapter explores the concept of language gap from a diachronic perspective and the way in which the Andalusian education system has taken actions emanating from European language policies, aimed at bridging the language gap among young people through initiatives of great impact on content and language education, such as the consolidation of bilingual education programmes through the CLIL approach and pedagogical tools like the Integrated Language Curriculum, the European Language Portfolio, and the School Language Project.

This chapter examines the origins and singularity of Design Thinking as a humanistic discipline that can be successfully exploited in education. It explores the pedagogical potential inherent in Design Thinking strategies to foster creativity, critical thinking skills, and deep learning in content subjects taught through the medium of an additional language in CLIL settings. The author contends that Design Thinking will ultimately empower content teachers to rethink their teaching techniques repertoire, to redesign their CLIL practice, to cultivate inquiring minds in their classroom, to give students memorable learning experiences, and to equip them with core 21st-century competences related to creativity, critical thinking, teamwork, and intercultural awareness. Design Thinking strategies prompt learners to think out of the box and seek alternative answers to learning tasks, whilst cultivating LOTS and HOTS in Bloom's taxonomy and ensuring learning progression along both the content and language pathways.

espanolEl objeto de este articulo es analizar el pensamiento del poeta norteamericano Mark Strand en torno a lo que representa la poesia, tal y como se manifiesta en sus poemarios y obras en prosa, mas en concreto, y pormenorizado, en The Monument (1978), un libro de “notas, observaciones, diatribas y revelaciones” sobre la inmortalidad literaria, asi como una meditacion sobre “la traduccion del yo, del texto como yo, del yo como libro”; en The Continuous Life (1990), una antologia de piezas iluminadoras sobre aspectos diversos de la empresa literaria, tales como la lectura, la traduccion y la multitud de seres que conforman el yo; y en The Weather of Words. Poetic Invention (2000), una antologia de ensayos sumamente esclarecedores en los que el poeta analiza los aspectos primordiales de la poesia como creacion de la imaginacion humana, el significado o contenido del poema y el proceso creativo, ayudado por el magisterio de mentes tan preclaras como las de Carl Jung, Paul Valery y Wallace Stevens. EnglishThe aim of this paper is to look at American poet Mark Strand’s thinking about what poetry is all about, as expressed in his poetry collections and prose works, especially in The Monument (1978), a book of “notes, observations, rants, and revelations” about literary immortality, but also a meditation on “the translation of a self, and the text as self, the self as book”; in The Continuous Life (1990), a collection of luminous pieces on various aspects of the literary enterprise, including reading, translation and the multitude of selves making up the self; and in The Weather of Words: Poetic Invention (2000), a collection of insightful essays in which the poet discusses the essentials of poetry as something made by the human imagination, the meaning or content of a poem, and the creative process with the guidance of such preeminent minds as those of Carl Jung, Paul Valery and Wallace Stevens.

espanolEste articulo trata de elucidar un poema titulado «Of the Snaring of Birds», incluido en la secuencia poetica del autor canadiense Robert Bringhurst titulada The Old in Their Knowing (2005). Dedicado al filosofo aleman Martin Heidegger, «Of the Snaring of Birds» se desvela como una elocuente version, no como traduccion fiel y literal, del texto griego original de Sofocles, y encierra una profunda meditacion sobre lo que nos hace verdaderamente humanos. Bringhurst encuentra la inspiracion literaria en un texto de mas de 2400 anos y lo renueva para aquellos lectores del siglo XXI que aun estan avidos por escuchar las intuiciones y hallazgos de nuestros ancestros. EnglishThis article aims at shedding light on a poem entitled “Of the Snaring of Birds”, one of the twelve pieces included in Canadian poet Robert Bringhurst’s The Old in Their Knowing (2005). Dedicated to German philosopher Martin Heidegger, “Of the Snaring of Birds” turns out to be a most eloquent version, not a faithful rendering, of the original Greek text, as well as a probing meditation on what makes us truly human. Bringhurst finds literary sustenance in a 2,400-year-old text and makes it brand new for 21st-century readers who still care to listen to the insights of our ancestors.

Canadian novelist, poet and essayist Tim Bowling is one of the most prestigious authors in 21st-century Canadian letters. A prolific and versatile author, he has published twelve poetry collections, four novels, a memoir and a work of creative non-fiction so far. This paper looks at two of his novels, "The Bone Sharps" (2007) and "The Tinsmith" (2012), tools of knowledge that explore not just human consciousness as the lens through which we make sense of reality, including our selves, but also history, memory and identity, epistemology and ethics. A fragment of the world and a piece of human consciousness: this is what both novels are.