Re‐searching and re‐storying the complex and complicated relationship of biophilia and bibliophilia

Abstract

This article is a collaborative bricolage of poetry, autobiographical fragments, essay pieces, and images assembled together as a portrait of the authors’ ongoing existential, psychological and epistemological struggles as educators and learners, parents and children. The article captures a reflective exploration and collective sharing of their own life experiments, seeking to create ripples of provocation as well as resonation in the reader. Identifying biophilia (love of life/nature) as a key learning in environmental education, this work looks into the complex and complicated relationship between biophilia and bibliophilia (love of books). The article ends by identifying indwelling experience as key to biophilia, and suggests and advocates poetry‐making and story‐telling as methods for fostering indwelling.

Keywords:

• biophilia
• environmental education
• bibliophilia
• children’s literature
• poetic consciousness
• storytelling
• indwelling experience

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to our anonymous reviewers for their insightful criticisms. We appreciate the editors of this special issue for their support and patience. Also many thanks are due to Mina Elza for her wisdom and activism, and to Veronica Hotton for all manners of editorial support.

Notes

1. Daniela Elza (2008), the poet, notes: ‘As I read the French philosopher Gaston Bachelard, I was struck by how poetic his prose is at times. This is a poem where all the lines come from Bachelard (1964, 5–15). All I did was find them and arrange them and of course intervene stylistically’.