Sölheimajökull, glacial run-off in July 2013.

In English, the verb “to listen” has two connotations: 1) to sense the immediate environment through one’s physiology and 2) to pay attention to the statements, activities, or behaviours of an external being in order to comprehend something about that being. These two forms of listening, when combined but when not adequately practiced, provide a basis for humanity’s contemporary quandaries concerning environmental ethics and ecosystem destruction. How could increased listening skills and soundscape-awareness practices impact a person’s ability to interact (communicate, converse) with ecosystems and non-human species?

Ljósaljóð jökull

A poem from the in-progress manuscript ECHOLOLOGY by a rawlings.

who owns the environment

After my first visit to Ghent, I wrote some letters.

dear SOS

Final group composition during our Activating the Geopoetic workshop in Zagreb, Croatia. Vocal improvisation in the Francuski Pavilion. September 2018.

Activating the Geopoetic: Francuski Pavilion

While on a regional tour as the 2012 Queensland Poet-in-Residence, I spoke with Kim Kleidon of ABC Tropical North about an ecopoetics workshop in Mackay, similarities between rural Canada and rural Australia, and environmental protection noise policy.

ABC Tropical North Radio interview with a.rawlings

While travelling around Australia as the 2012 Queensland Poet-in-Residence, Kim Kleidon visited the Platypus Bush Camp to interview me about poetry and to chat with Wazza (the Bush Camp's owner) about platypus. Here is Wazza's portion of the interview (which commences with his rendition of favoured poem "The Man from Ironbark" by Banjo Patterson).

ABC Tropical North Radio interview with Wazza

Excerpted from SOUND OF MULL (a series of performance scores), "How to Perform Geochronology in the Anthropocene" is a sonic meditation through deep time and speculative futures.

How to Perform Geochronology in the Anthropocene

A windstorm from the northwest overtook Reykjavík with speeds beyond 25 m/s. Scaffolding and roofs blew off. Faxaflói Bay was whipped into fervour.

Wind, 1-2 November 2012

Echolology treats the book as a closed linguistic ecosystem while interrogating and indicting the English language's communicative reliance on pronouns and their inherent hierarchy. This book performs an ecopraxis, incorporating inherited procedures and poetic forms (lipogram, cut-up technique, homophonic translation, erasure) co-opted to emphasize a green ethos in writing practice through reduction, recyclage, and reuse of language.

“The Mushrooms of North” is excerpted from the section “Whose Who.” In this section, field guides of North America are decomposed using assorted erasure techniques based on an English-language pronoun lipogrammatic constraint.

“Mush vs. Rue” is excerpted from the section “Versus Verses.” Species pair off, again with the lipogrammatic constraint as the linguistic delimiter, to recompose interspecies relationship through speculative interactions.

The mixed forest soundscape is used via Creative Commons permission. It was audio-recorded by klankbeeld and made available through freesound.org: freesound.org/people/klankbeeld/sounds/253631/

The Mushrooms of North

Excerpted from Að jökla / To Glacier: A Handbook for Becoming-with Icelandic Glaciers
by a rawlings

The neologism að jökla takes Icelandic verb form and applies it to the word for glacier (jökull). This follows the behaviour of Icelandic seasonal verbs such as að vora (to become spring) and að vetra (to become winter), signalling metamorphic transition as their action. The glacier-verb neologism traces transition; in the case of current usage, it implies a flux in mass, leaning heavily towards transitional disappearance. The creation of this action word also allows for empathetic embodiment of glacier experiences.

Encouraged as a loanword to languages outwith Icelandic.

IPA: äːð̠ jœkʰl̥ɐ

Gratitude to Adam Świtała for expert sound mastery. Gratitude to Halla Steinunn Stefánsdóttir and Maja Jantar for editorial feedback. Gratitude to Steinar Bragi and Eiríkur Örn Norðdahl for Icelandic proofreading.

How to Learn Icelandic with Jöklar

"Green Notes" is a poemoir by Mette Moestrup and a rawlings, created for the Oslo Internasjonale Poesifestival 2020. For the festival, we were commissioned to share new work composed during the pandemic. The result? Green notes. Softer. Looser.

Text, concept, vocals: Mette Moestrup & a rawlings
Video, editing: a rawlings
Sound mix/mastery: Adam Świtała

Green Notes

a rawlings is a plant, mineral, animal, person, place, or thing. Member of experimental music duos MOSS MOSS NOT MOSS (with Rebecca Bruton) and Völva (with Maja Jantar). Acoustic ecology, sound poetry, extended vocal technique, hidden folk, hockets, dissonant glissandos, and ribbing for her pleasure.

a rawlings

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