March 9, 2011
Media contact: Anne Russell
Cell: 604-798-3709
Office: 604-795-2826
anne.russell@ufv.ca
Carolan to speak on citizenship and ecosystems in the global age at UFV lectureAt a time when we face an alarming number of environmental challenges and the sustainability of our current way of living on the planet Earth is in question, might it be a good idea to heed the words of a poet who popularized the term ecology?
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Dr. Trevor Carolan
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Dr. Trevor Carolan thinks so. Carolan, a professor of English at the University of the Fraser Valley, has been inspired by Gary Snyder for decades. The work, words, and ideas of Snyder will form the core of Ecosystems, Mandalas, Watersheds, and Citizenship, a talk that Carolan will give on Wednesday, March 16, as part of the University Lecture Series at UFV’s Abbotsford campus.The lecture will be presented at 4 pm in Room B121.
A Pulitzer-prize–winning ‘beat’ poet who was part of the San Francisco renaissance and who has spent more than 50 years pondering and writing about the interconnectivity of all things, Snyder has long been an inspiration to Carolan and many others. Snyder has worked a long list of working class jobs, spent years studying Buddhism in Japan, was one of the first “back to the landers” in both Asia and America, and in the mid-1970s published Turtle Island, a key text in the environmental movement.
Because of his life experiences, Snyder is uniquely positioned to synthesize the best teachings of eastern and western culture into a new type of world consciousness that is mindful of place while simultaneously acknowledging that all things are one, according to Carolan. And Snyder has a local connection: he spent part of his childhood just over the border in Washington and as an adult visited with similar-thinking folks in British Columbia many times over the decades.
“As a founding father of the international environmental movement, Snyder’s approach to global ecology is informed by his upbringing and connection with peoples in the Cascade Range that overlooks UFV, trans-Pacific poets, land and wilderness sustainability issues, cross-cultural anthropology, Mahayana Buddhism, lived experiences with ‘the bush’, and his scholarly connections with the American Academy of Arts and Letters,” notes Carolan in his synopsis of the lecture.
Carolan will consider Snyder's contributions to what citizenship might mean in the current global age, in particular his conception of planetary ecological stewardship as a form of citizenship.
Carolan calls Snyder an elder statesman of American culture who helped shape a world view that has a west coast ‘sense of place’ but an understanding that everything is interconnected.
“In this global age we have to rethink our definitions of citizenship, of the sacred, and of the community. The old ideas aren’t working, or we wouldn’t find our world in crumbling condition environmentally. Nowadays it often feels like open season on organized religion, but Snyder is urging us to rethink what sacredness might mean in this context. He advocates for deep ecology, or an understanding that things are fundamentally interconnected. It is time for politics with a soul, which we haven’t seen much of, apart from Nelson Mandela, the Dalai Lama, and Mother Theresa.”
Carolan notes that Snyder, the beat movement, and the West Coast artistic tradition he represents have influenced many trends we see today, such as slam poetry, writing in a vernacular voice, hip hop, voluntary simplicity, localism (i.e., the 100 Mile Diet), and intentional communities.
Snyder, who turned 80 in 2010, lives and writes in California.
This free public lecture is sponsored by the UFV Research Advisory Council with the support of the UFV Research Office.
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