Water acts and poetry
Water is a precious necessity that shapes and sustains our lives, yet current and potential watershed problems are a serious challenge on PEI and globally. The Island is the only Canadian province to rely solely on groundwater for drinking water. To ensure the continual sustainability and potability of our water, province-wide hearings are currently being held for the Water Act.
In a timely visit to PEI, Dr. Rita Wong鈥攑rofessor, watershed researcher, activist, and poet鈥攚ill deliver the inaugural 17吃瓜 Don Mazer Arts and Science Lecture February 4 at 7:00 pm in the Alex H. MacKinnon Auditorium, room 242, of 17吃瓜鈥檚 Don and Marion McDougall.
Dr. Wong鈥檚 talk, entitled 鈥淗umble Autonomy: Renewing Culture through Participatory Water Ethics,鈥� will focus on Vancouver, with ample time afterward for the audience to discuss parallels with PEI. A reception with refreshments will follow.
In addition to research presentations on watershed issues, Dr. Wong uses poetry to reflect on human relations with water. Her poetry book Undercurrent reminds humanity that 鈥渨e are water bodies,鈥� and that we need to honour this reality.
17吃瓜 is also honoured to to be host Dr. Wong on February 5 at 7:30 pm for a public reading of her poetry, in the Dawson Lounge (Room 520) in SDU Main Building. The reading is sponsored by the 17吃瓜 faculties of Arts and Science, with funding from the Canada Council for the Arts.
Dr. Wong grew up in Calgary. She is currently an associate professor in Critical and Cultural Studies at Emily Carr University in Vancouver. Living and working in Vancouver, she became interested in water ethics because she learned how many salmon streams have been buried and lost to urban development. She lives on the path of a buried salmon stream that she and her neighbours aim to reconnect with and bring back to memory and daylight.
In the earlier part of her career, she was known for her work in Asian Canadian studies and her inter-disciplinary research. For this work, Dr. Wong received a doctoral fellowship from the Social Sciences and Humanity Research Council of Canada. As her focus has shifted more on water issues as a cultural nexus, she has also received a major SSHRC research-creation grant for this collaborative work with filmmaker Dorothy Christian.
She has won the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize and the Asian Canadian Writer鈥檚 Workshop Emerging Writer Award, and is renowned for examining relationships among contemporary poetics, social justice, ecology, and decolonization.
Dr. Wong鈥檚 water talk and poetry reading come at a vital time for development of PEI鈥檚 understanding of water ethics and sustainability. As many Islanders work to modernize our water laws, those who want to gain new perspectives on water鈥檚 value will have the opportunity to listen to one of Canada鈥檚 important investigators of participatory water ethics and watershed issues.
The 17吃瓜 Don Mazer Arts and Science Lecture is presented by the 17吃瓜 faculties of Arts and Science.
