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Paper short abstract:

This paper considers the historical marginalisation of lichens before underscoring the significance of lichenness today. Poetry provides a lens for reading lichens culturally, leading us beyond the pitfalls of an individuated subjectivity toward an understanding of life as relational and ramifying.

Paper long abstract:

Lichens are among the planet’s oldest, slowest-growing, and most neglected life forms in the sciences and humanities. While animals and plants have become increasing subjects of concern in the Environmental Humanities, little focus has been placed on lichens—not only as ecological agents but as biocultural complexities. This paper will consider the intricate life-worlds of lichens as mediated in contemporary poetry. I will begin by attempting to think-with lichens at the micro-scale or what lichenologists call “the lichen lifestyle.” I will then reflect on some key moments in the historical marginalisation of lichens before underscoring the significance of lichenness today. In this regard, poetry provides a lens for reading lichens culturally. Jane Hirshfield’s “For the Lobaria...” considers the lichen lifestyle as a “marriage of fungi and algae” yet questions the broader disregard of lichens. Adopting the perspective of the lichen, Arthur Sze’s “Lichen Song” similarly confronts the neglect of these ubiquitous and inimitable organisms with which people share their everyday domestic worlds. Like the poems by Hirshfield and Sze, Forrest Gander’s “Twice Alive” gives prominence to the more-than-human wisdom of lichens as sources of inspiration for learning to live more symbiotically on—and with—the Earth. I conclude by suggesting that lichen life leads us beyond the pitfalls of an individuated subjectivity toward an understanding of life as relational and ramifying. A metamorphosis of consciousness—precipitating a revitalized politics—under the influence of lichenness is a compelling task on a planet ever more devitalised by the withering of wonder.