Wishing ribbons tied into a tree: a poetic practice for elegising ‘lost’ deer

Clootie Ribbons was commissioned for the Art Park Gallery on Rhodes, Greece in 2021. The text is both an elegy for and invocation of ‘lost’ deer, curated from lines in poems that cross centuries and continents. As a series of typed ‘wishing ribbons’, the work is designed to be tied into a tree so that branches, leaves and ribbons form a collaborative ecopoetic installation. In my creative practice research, I analyse poetries and visual representations of deer and make poetic works that seek to question human attitudes towards them. Every year, hundreds of thousands of deer are killed in the UK alone through culling and road traffic accidents. In the US, deer have been culled in their millions. While some deer species are currently endangered, burgeoning populations of others are frequently cast as a problem for conservation. Poetry has long formed part of memorial culture and this article reflects on Clootie Ribbons as an ecopoetic memorial situated in the sixth mass extinction and biocultural context of Rhodes. Drawing on Anna Tsing’s term, I consider this material work as a form of ‘polyphonic assemblage’ that raises questions about which nonhuman lives are valued. I extend the interest and possibilities of ecopoetry to mark ongoing ecological losses.