What is Metabolic Poetics?

“Metabolic poetics is concerned with the potential of expanded modes of reading and writing to shift the frames and scales of conventional forms of signification in order to bring into focus the often inscrutable biological and cultural writing intrinsic to the Anthropocene, especially as this is reflected in the inextricable link between the metabolic processes of human and nonhuman bodies and the global metabolism of energy and capital. We wear the energy systems that power our societies in the form of chemicals in our flesh and in the hormonal messages of the endocrine system. We house shifting communities of microbes that reflect our dependence on processed, industrialized food production. As a result of these influences, metabolic rifts have developed within human bodies and societies (obesity epidemics, income inequality) as well as within larger planetary biogeochemical cycles (increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide). How might we expand our capacity for literacy as our awareness of intertwined material-semiotic worldings grows?...”

- from Adam Dickinson, “Metabolic Poetics,” in Counter-Desecration: A Glossary for Writing Within the Anthropocene, edited by Linda Russo and Marthe Reed (Wesleyan University Press, 2018.)