On Exhibit at Robeson Library: Foraging Poetry in The Wild; Created & Curated by Sophia Westfall

Over the course of two semesters, Sophia Westfall, a student researcher at the Mid-Atlantic Regional Center for the Humanities (MARCH), studied the relationship between books and environmentalism, combining those efforts to create Poems in the Wild: On Making Biodegradable Literature, an Honors English project, and producing hands-on workshops at Proof, a humanities makerspace at MARCH. Westfall’s research explores the intersection of literature’s mortality and immortality through the creation of a book made entirely from biodegradable materials, such as plant fibers and seeds. The project challenges traditional notions of literature’s permanence by constructing a book whose physicality—its pages, stitching, and composition—naturally biodegrades at an observational rate (unlike traditional books, which often outlive their creators). By examining the interaction between the physical medium and the written text, this study argues that while the "flesh" of the book may die, its stories can take on new life in both a material and contextual enduring sense. This demonstrates the cyclical, regenerative nature of literature.

Through a critical-making approach, this research highlights the lively influence of materials on both the construction and interpretation of the book. Its physicality, from the texture of paper to the growth of seeds embedded within it, directly impact the writing process, creating unique textual forms that challenge conventional reading practices. This project discerns the life cycle of literature by creating a book that is biodegradable in order to both experiment with the mortality of literature, but to simultaneously accelerate the life cycle to an observational state. Poems in the Wild illustrates the aliveness of literature, because the books participate in both their physical construction as well as their literary contents, and due to the mortality of their physicality. Hence, these books influence themselves an equal amount that the human researcher influences them.

These physical materials do not emerge from a vacuum. They are sourced from particular and local environments. This project further interrogates the role that the ecosystems that produce these materials–the leaves that become book covers, the petals that are pressed into pages–have in shaping literature. This exhibit showcases a number of examples, highlighting the deconstructed process of bookbinding and printing practices while also providing up-close examples of biodegradable materials and the decomposition process.