Anthesis

Abstract

This thesis recounts the exploration of transmuting a mental health crisis into a potentially transformative experience that relies on multispecies relationships including the pedagogy of an agave. It uses the example of an orca's grieving vigil to explore the role community contributes to healing and manifests in a poem that disrupts a normalized and habituated narrative to reclaim its wildness at the edge of knowing and syntax. In other words, this work endeavours to capture the operational aspect of a transformative and embodied praxis in motion. It records the experience of the public launching of this poem via an online platform during COVID and how community, engaging with that platform, adapts and participates. It also addresses the culmination and impact of studying the systems of oppression without a trauma-informed pedagogy in place for how this singular and micro experience can potentially serve a more macro understanding of crisis and trauma.