Flyway: A Long Poem

Abstract

Flyway is a long-poem articulation of home set within the Canadian landscape and told through the lens of forced migration and its corollary of trauma. Tracing the trajectory of the Russian Mennonite diaspora, Flyway examines how intergenerational upheaval generates anxieties of place which are mirrored in the human-disrupted migratory patterns of the natural world. Drawing from the rich tradition of the Canadian long poem, from my roots as a third-generation Mennonite immigrant, from eco-poetics, and from ecological research into the impact of climate change on the endangered landscape of Manitoba’s tallgrass prairie, Flyway migrates along geographical, psychological, and affective routes in an attempt to understand complexities of home.