Palm-Like Fingers Holding a Coarse Line of Air: Poetic Enquiry into Southwest Australian Flora

Abstract

Visual forms of botanic representation-taxonomic illustration, wildflower photography, landscape painting and picturesque prose-depict plants as idealised images fixed in space and time. Scientific language further objectifies the plant, extruding it from its broader ecological and cultural contexts, while visually dissecting it into two-dimensional planes. Yet, flora is 'poiētic', that is, perpetually unfolding and shifting between life cycle states according to seasonal rhythms. Multi-dimensional representation of flora, therefore, moves between specific synchronic visual moments and broad diachronic multi-sensory patterns. Scholarship on arts-informed enquiry characterises poetry as a qualitative research methodology and a 'poiētic' process. A long-standing tradition of poetic enquiry into flora predates contemporary theoretical models of arts-based research, and is exemplified by the work of American naturalist H.D. Thoreau. In examining the potential of poetic enquiry in the multi-layered representation of flora, this paper employs a structure that intersperses theoretical discussion with poetic interludes about Southwest Australian plants.