Rishma Dunlop

In Search of Tawny Grammar:
Poetics, Landscape, and Embodied Ways of Knowing

Abstract:

In this article, the researcher explores Thoreau’s notion of gramatica parda, a dark and dusky knowledge inspired by the natural world as the concept relates to embodied knowing, alternative, artistic forms of research representation, and education. The approaches are interdisciplinary, drawing from perspectives of feminist geography, literary and aesthetic theories, theories of embodiment, perception, and ecology. Through these multiple lenses, poetry, fiction, and narrative forms are introduced as possibilities for epistemologies and ontologies. In this work, the researcher draws on her own work as poet/fiction-writer/researcher and teacher. The narrative explorations aresites that envision ecology,landscape,and poetic “story- telling” as sites of pedagogical possibilities.

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