Megan Kaminski


Megan Kaminski
  • Professor of English & Environmental Studies
she/they

Contact Info

Phone:
Wescoe Hall, Room 3031

Biography

Megan Kaminski is the author of three books of poetry, Gentlewomen (Noemi Press, 2020), Deep City (Noemi Press, 2015) and Desiring Map (Coconut Books, 2012). She is also the author of Prairie Divination (Sunseen Books, 2022), a book of illustrated essays and oracle deck in collaboration with artist L. Ann Wheeler, and Quietly Between (A Viewing Space, 2022), a co-authored collection of poetry and photography.



Her current book project, Blazing Star, explores the healing modalities of plants and the liberatory possibilities of radical tenderness through a poetics of care with and for the more-than-human world. The poems reimagine interspecies communication and nonhuman encounters through a speculative poetics of transcorporeal embodiments in “thick time.” Through listening and interspecies avuncular care, she develops individual relationships, conversing through hand and voice, water and soil, leaf and flower, breeze and song. This care blossoms into speculative permutations of the body and self through an exploration of trauma, healing, and the more-than-human relationships we are always already engaging in, visioning new possibilities for reciprocity and community.



Her research is grounded in scholarship in queer ecology, plant studies, somatics, disability studies, eco-cultural studies, and the environmental arts and humanities. Informed by interdisciplinary research in social welfare, plant biology, and philosophy, as well as previous work in the healing arts and at non-profit environmental organizations, her creative work and scholarship aim to undo the cultures of dominance and exploitation that have brought us to this current moment of ecological crisis and inequality.

Research

Poetry, ecopoetry and ecopoetics, queer ecology, the plant humanities, eco-arts and writing practices

Selected Publications

Gentlewomen, Noemi Press, 2020.

Deep City, Noemi Press, 2015.

Desiring Map, Coconut Books, 2012.

Prairie Divination (w/ artist L. Ann Wheeler), Sunseen Books, 2022.

Quietly Between (w/ Brad Vogler, Lori Anderson Moseman, and Sarah Green), A Viewing Space, 2022.   

Awards & Honors

Hall Center for the Humanities Research Fellow, 2020 and 2015.

Bernadette Gray-Little “Expanding the Reach” Award, 2019.

Finalist, H.O.P.E. (Honor for the Outstanding Progressive Educator) Award, 2019.

Scholars on Site Grant (for the Ad Astra Writing Project), 2019.

Keeler Family Intra-University Professorship, 2018.

Byron Caldwell Smith Book Award, 2017.

Spencer Museum of Art, Integrated Arts Research Initiative Faculty Fellow, 2016.

Residencies at: Dumbarton Oaks, Harvard University; Vashon Artist Residency; Arte Studio Ginestrelle; Millay Colony; Summer Forum for Inquiry + Exchange; Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts; Summer Literary Seminars