“Remembering Rain”: Creative Writing as a Tool for Decolonizing Geography

Abstract

This presentation will look at creative writing as a way of perceiving and showing the intrinsic agency of the (un)built environment, especially as it relates to climate change. I will draw from Daoist and North American Indigenous literature, as well as excerpts of poetry and essays from my own chapbook “In All Spaces Liminal” to demonstrate how creative writing can serve as an alternative method of observing and understanding the world around us. I argue that creative writing, and other forms of creative expression, can reposition the un(built) environment as an agent that exerts forces on humanity, rather than vice versa. This presentation contributes to this session on the intersections of creative writing and geography by showing that practice of creative writing can offer a valuable method for interrogating the intellectualization of the earth through the traditional academic field of geography.