“How Much They Can Teach us”: Lorna Crozier’s Portrayal of NonHuman Animals

Abstract

Drawing on literary animal studies theory, ecopoetry and material ecocriticism, and following Shapiro and Copeland’s (2005) analysis criteria, this article examines Lorna Crozier’s depiction of non-human animals in her poems. The corpus consists of the poetry and photography collections The Wild in You (2015) and The House the Spirit Builds (2019), and the prose poetry collection God of Shadows (2018). I contend that Crozier criticises the human abuse of the nonhuman world; proposes ways for humans to discard anthropocentrism in favour of biocentrism; and grants saliency to insects, rodents, amphibians, and reptiles as animal species that have usually been despised in the West.