A Poetic Mycology of the Senses: Four poems on mushrooms

Abstract

If fungi comprise "the forgotten kingdom", then poetry that takes fungi and the discipline of mycology as its subject matter could be - by association - the forgotten ecopoetry (or perhaps "mycopoetry"). As the third "f" in contemporary biodiversity conservation, languishing behind fauna and flora, fungi occupy a comparably liminal and, possibly, marginal position in literary history and ecocritical studies. In particular, fungi straddle a largely unnavigated terrain between the recent "human-animal studies" and its literary counterpart "zoocriticism" and the emergent "critical plant studies" and its budding complement "vegetal ecocriticism". As a consequence, even amongst ecocritics, fungi have been grouped into the latter category, mirroring a tendency in the history of the biological sciences to aggregate fungi and plants. Yet, as neither plant nor animal - that is, existentially in-between the other two "f"s - fungi lack the powers of photosynthesis synonymous with green plants, and also proliferate through radically different mechanisms. I, therefore, suggest that the ecocritical reading of mycotal poetry should be performed in the context of the unique otherness of these organisms.