at an ecopoetry workshop I was invited to say something about this poem as ecopoem. Here is what I said:[1]

this poem is a composition about/with killing and eating animals and the violence inherent to human and family relationships. It is also about tenderness.

It deals with the killing of pigs in Portugal done in traditional ways, not in slaughterhouses where animals that are industrially raised ­– the actual term is produced– are killed.

I based it on my experiences during childhood and adolescence with taking part in killing pigs and cutting them; preparing sausages, and in all the processes that happen after the animal is dead.

I used some specific vocabulary of the Center region of Portugal, where I am from, for names of tools, body parts of pigs, gestures, plants, food. This is the area of Portugal where almost all the meat that is eaten in the country is produced – pig, chicken, turkey and others.

Lack of regulation on waste waters has turned the river Lis that crosses the region in one of the most polluted rivers of Portugal from wastewater coming from animal production but also from leather and grain production units.[2]

This is a long poem created by several sections that can be read separately but that work better in relation. I mostly use verbs. Sometimes verbs as adjectives and verbs as nouns. This I learned, as translator and researcher, from North American poets as Brenda Hillman; Evelyn Reilly; Allison Cobb; John Cage; Gary Snyder; Michael McClure; Charles Olson; Susan Howe.[3]

Vegan ecofeminism is important as well – Carol J. Adams’ The Sexual Politics of Meat ­– for the distinction between corpse/cadaver and meat – which is a cultural construction operated by separation and differentiation:

to cut bodies into meat to cut the word

verb as action

I also wanted to work with rhythm and sound, so I use repetitions. Hopefully these create, through interrelations within the poem, sets of frequencies that distribute the action of cutting in long time frames: from childhood till today.

The title Dia do Não  [Day of No] refers to the day before the killing in which the pig has no water and no food:

a time and space of negativity

The poem is accompanied by images by the Portuguese artist André Alves. Images and words follow different directions:

the text starts from  the whole body and ends with the cut pieces; from concrete to abstract; the image from abstract parts to the whole body. I have Rita Barreira to thank for this idea as well as for suggesting working with André.

I consider this an ecopoem because by engaging the cultural constructions of animals as non-others in the Center region it brings forth the environmental history of animal production in this area. The poem entangles culture and nature; flesh meat tendons muscles smiles love cross between pigs and humans, knifes separate, as Evelyn Reilly asks in Echolocation: “And why should our bodies end at our skin?”

Dia do Não was published as a full-length book in Portugal by Douda Correria in 2018. Some sections have been published at: Revista Inefável 15 (online). Other sections are forthcoming in the Ibero-American anthology Futuros Multiespecie edited by Azucena Castro for Bartlebooth (in press); and the Brazilian, African, and

Portuguese ecopoetry anthology O Livro do Verso Vivo (in press), edited by Thássio Ferreira and Maurício Vieira.

[1] The reading took place during the Ecopoetry Workshop at  the #APHELEIA 2023 seminar on Adaptation and Transformation: Community-based Practices in Mação, Portugal. It was organized by BRIDGES UNESCO Sustainability Science Coalition. Poets attending: Esthela Calderon (Nicaragua), Juan Carlos Galeano (Colombia & USA), Nuno Marques (Portugal), José Manuel Marrero Henríquez (Canary Islands), Bernard Quetchenbach (USA) and Catarina Santiago Costa (Portugal).

[2] See https://csg.rc.iseg.ulisboa.pt/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/E-Book_PortugalAmbienteEmMovimento.pdf

[3] I discuss particulars of form in North American ecopoetry here: http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:kth:diva-298467

Welcome to join a mid-seminar in doctoral education on zoom!
FEBRUARY 10, 2023,  at 13.15-15.00 CET
Between Internationalism and Nationalism HIV/AIDS response in Mozambique, 1986-2020
Araújo Domingos, PhD Student
Division of History of Science, Technology and Environment
KTH Royal Institute of Technology
Supervisors: Nina Wormbs, Urban Lundberg and Sandra Manuel
Opponent: Henrik Ernstson

Araújo came to the Division in 2018, as a doctoral student in the collaborative project CHEPIS – Strengthening African higher education research and expertise, where the Division has a part. Read more on the project homepage!

Araújo’s main focus is to understand how Mozambique has responded to HIV/AIDS from 1986 to 2020. Email history@abe.kth.se for the zoom link to the seminar!

But as always, in parallel with wrapping up the old year – the new year is also in planning. In 2023 we look forward to some big changes. New projects on Carbon Transnationalism, The EHL will become a KTH Centre and the Division will get a new head. On top of that the administration at KTH is merging into a new organization and we have a new President! Luckily some things are kept as they have been though and one of those is our Higher Seminar series.

This coming spring we look forward to learn more about Nuclear-Water, political ecology and the research seminar as a community of practice. We have four doctoral students that are planning for their final seminars, and three additional that plan for their mid-seminars. Some of the seminars will be held on zoom, but most of them are on site in our own environment. Check out to full schedule here – some updates will come to it – and please drop by if you are in the neighborhood: Higher Seminar Spring 2023