Choose a lyric poem by one of the writers on the course syllabus (Jamie, Roberts, Farley, Samson, McKay), OR choose a passage of about a page from a prose text on the course syllabus, fiction or non-fiction (Ballard, McKay, Jamie, Butler, Farley and Roberts). In an essay of no more than 1500 words (about five typed, double-spaced pages), offer a close reading of the text you have chosen. How does the form or the structure or the style of this text contribute to its meaning? How does the text you have chosen contend with one key concern of the course, such as boundaries, wilderness, otherness, ecology, liminality, subjectivity, transgression, entropy, corporeality, the inhuman,the Anthropocene, climate? Make sure that you establish a well-focused, critical argument for your essay.

OR

Offer a creative response to the invitation John K. Samson invites from his listeners at the close of his song "My Favourite Chords" to "Sing me a story I haven't heard yet." Compose a 3-5 minutes song, produce a 3-5 minute YouTube video, concoct a visual assemblage or a piece of audio art or photographic collage, or write some form of constellation or a lyric essay responding to cues -- like Samson's -- from the course readings. What shapes or forms or styles can such responses take up? What new or recombinant or remixed forms of language or knowledge do these writers call for? How do you respond to that call? Make sure that you establish a clear conceptual focus for your work.

OR

Write an extended entry -- or two related entries, no more than 1500 words total -- in your version of a "geopoetic alphabet." You may wish to focus on objects (or concepts) encountered on our field trips, such a fossil sample or taxidermic animals or suspended whale skeletons. How can particular words, or objects, produce resonances or offer encounters with deep time or with the non-human? Can you present your version of an archeology of words -- akin to McKay's or Jamie's explorations of etymologies and connotations? You may wish to revise and expand the entries you produced for and presented in class.

Due in class on Friday November 4, 2016.
Note that the due date for this assignment has been extended.