The ecopoetic potential of a citizen science audio database: Uploading John Clare to Xeno-canto

Abstract

This article explores the potential for an online database to facilitate modes of environmental communication above and beyond the collection and display of scientific data. That database is Xeno-canto (https://www.xeno-canto.org), a website where users upload and share recordings of wild birds. I consider Xeno-canto as a platform for what Jonathan Bate calls ‘ecopoetry’, through a focus on one of Bate’s key examples: the poet John Clare, a writer known for the close description of birds. In this multimodal project, I develop a dialogue between ecopoetry, as defined by Bate and enacted by Clare, and the architecture of the Xeno-canto platform. The project is multimodal in that it takes the form of a critical essay that works in tandem with a user account on Xeno-canto that I set up under the name ‘John Clare’.