Repurposing Natural History: The Ecomorphic Experiments of Elizabeth-Jane Burnett in the Poetry Collection of Sea

This paper examines the epistemological conversation between poetry and the life sciences in Elizabeth-Jane Burnett’s collection from 2021, Of Sea. The collection is based on an entomological survey that lists the presence of 39 invertebrates at the coastal site of Dawlish Warren in the UK. By repurposing the protocols of naturalist observation in her poems, Burnett inscribes poetry within a system of knowledge production that outlines the necessity of transdisciplinary dialogue at a time of emergency. Her situated experiments endeavour to transcribe the prints of the insects she has encountered through swimming. Her poetry can thus be characterised as ecomorphic, and can be understood, from a literary point of view, as the adaptation of the human perspective to the current planetary changes, more particularly the extinction crisis. Fostering attentiveness to the non-human, the collection aims to bring about a mind shift in human relationality to the natural world.