Like the river itself, Houle’s The Grand River Watershed: A Folk Ecology suggests how seemingly jumbled, separate parts in fact exist in a web of relationships. For Houle, the best hope we have of comprehending the complexities of a phenomenon like the Grand River is rooted in our accumulated encounters with, and our collective articulation of, the river’s countless aspects over time, not in any one measurable part or moment of it.
Houle’s creative pairing of literary and ecological modes presents the Grand River as a complex living system that is full of interconnection and meaning, reinvigorating poetry’s possibilities as a tool for engaging with and speaking of the natural world.
