A site-specific engagement with an ecosystem of Mnidoo Mnising (Manitoulin Island), Conversations with the Kagawong River raises the possibility of collaboration with the more-than-human. The author spent several years learning to listen to the Gaagigewang Ziibi (Kagawong River) and to follow the rhythms and patterns of its flora and fauna, the weather and the water. She invited the participation of various collaborators – woodpeckers, otters, currents, ice, grasses. The resulting poems, supported by local Elders, language speakers, and historians, make visible the colonial, environmental, and social processes that construct an ecosystem and (settler) relationships to it.

sophie anne edwards (she/her/settler) lives on Mnidoo Mnising, Manitoulin Island, in Northeastern Ontario with her dog Bea and a roster of other WWOOFers who help in the garden. Her first loves were books and the water until the birth of her daughter Emilie Aude. Her writing has been generously supported by the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council and published by numerous journals and micropresses across Canada. Sophie holds an MA in Interdisciplinary Studies and a Certificate in Creative Writing from Humber College and is a Ph.D. candidate in geography at Queen's University.

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"The Gaagigewang Ziibi ecosystem speaks through poetry, through Sophie. Readers will be inspired to slow down, examine their environment, engage with nature, and maybe even learn a language. Perhaps inspired by this work we will all have conversations with a river, or a lake, or forest. True deep observant conversations." – Shelley Pearen, The Manitoulin Expositor