‘I Am Once Again Refracting’: Toward a Feminist Psychogeography

by: Madeleine Bazil , November 10, 2025

I identify as a young woman, an artist, a poet, a feminist, and an immigrant. My poems’ speakers are not synonymous with my whole self but always embody and reflect some combination of these positional self-identities: parts of this whole. My work engages heavily with physical and emotional landscapes. It is influenced by Guy Debord’s concept of psychogeography, which ‘sets for itself the study of the precise laws and specific effects of the geographical environment, whether consciously organised or not, on the emotions and behavior of individuals’ (1955: 1). Much of my work is shaped by open questions of memory and of place—and how these questions shape identities and relationships—with keen awareness of the impossible role of language itself to articulate such matters.

The poems presented below are from my debut poetry book-in-progress (working title Snake Season). They plumb intricate landscapes of identity and intimacy within the broader context of psychogeography, ecological mourning, and postmemory. I draw upon the work of cultural memory scholar Marianne Hirsch, who coined the concept of postmemory, and writes that ‘postmemory’s connection to the past is … not actually mediated by recall but by imaginative investment, projection, and creation’ (2008: 5). My body of work conjures encounters with the natural world and wrestles with my ongoing questions of place, youth, and selfhood whilst turning the lens toward desire, loss, and the elusiveness of poetic language itself. Throughout, I establish myself as an archivist of psychogeography, a witness to moments achingly tender and prismatic.

Christopher Kempf writes that the genre of poetic self-portraiture has its contemporary genesis as

part of the modernist adaptation of painterly technique to poetic production. Like modernist painting, the poetic self-portrait refuses a unified image of the self, representing identity not as fixed and coherent but as fleeting and contextual, open to reinvention, perceivable, like Picasso’s musicians, from a multiplicity of angles (Kempf: 2016).

Personally, I am inspired by the lineage of feminist self-portraiture in 20th and 21st-century lyric poetry that comes before me, including (though of course not limited to) works such as Linda Gregg’s ‘The Light Continues’—after which I wrote ‘Arcadia’—Sharon Olds’ ‘Poem for the Breasts,’ Diane Seuss’ ‘Self-Portrait with Sylvia Plath’s Braid,’ Ama Codjoe’s ‘On Seeing and Being Seen’ and Gabrielle Bates’ ‘Self-Portrait as Provincial.’ These are poems which self-reflexively investigate the links and dissonances between the body, physical landscapes, and felt landscapes of emotion and memory—all framed by identity, selfhood, and desire.

In this critical reflection, I examine a selection of eight poems from my manuscript, conducting a semiotic and content analysis of the themes, motifs, and images within this body of work, and reading it through the lens of feminist self-reflexivity in relation to concepts of ecological mourning, psychogeography, and postmemory. I look to the work of Ramona Beltrán, who makes a feminist case for self-reflexivity and extends this discussion, arguing for a praxis of poetry that may be considered as feminist self-portraiture. I investigate how the visual language, syntax, and themes of my poetry bring to the fore open-ended questions of self-identity, environment, and memory. In doing so, I articulate the complexity of these questions in the context of the feminist, self-rendered gaze—this female gaze itself an extrapolation of Laura Mulvey’s theory of the male gaze (1975: 6)—and I explore how my poetics of self-portraiture articulates, memorialises, and complicates the contemporary environment, both geographic and cultural.

Beltrán argues for poetic self-reflexivity as a feminist tool. Self-reflexivity is inherently situational and includes the ‘exploration of positional identities and values’ (Beltrán 2019: 147). It follows that by articulating positional identities, the poet therefore finds an entry point through which to consider and situate themselves ‘in relationship to those others as well as the complex influences of power and oppression that shape identities and give them meaning’ (Beltran 2019: 147). Encountering Beltrán’s words was an affirming experience for me as a poet and multidisciplinary artist. I am consistently preoccupied with the subjectivity of memory, belonging, and spatiality, and how these elements may shape identity and relationships with the self, others, and the natural world. These concerns are continually manifested and metabolised in my work via various modes of self-portraiture—including the self-reflexive lyric poem. Beltrán posits that naming our positional identities is a ‘politics of resistance’: inherently political, and essential for the project of critical feminist scholarship. And, as she notes, a poetics of self-reflexivity invites one ‘to creatively excavate and express depth and breadth of their lived experiences’ (Beltrán 2019: 149). In ‘Isotopes,’ I draw a line between the often-impenetrable emotional landscape of memory and the physical landscape of scientific effort. The poem functions as an archive and witness of ecologies of life, both in the biological world and in an internal, emotional world. In this allusion to coring a tree and radiocarbon dating, I link the practice of poetics with the practice of the physicist: both disciplines are defined by their curiosity, on a granular level, about what it means to exist, and a hunger to engage with the unknown. As in physics, a poem’s apparent negative space is richly textured, its structure contingent upon intricacies of matter and energy. As poet Jane Hirshfield puts it: ‘Most good poems hold some part of their thoughts in invisible ink … Lyric poetry rests on a fulcrum of said and unsaid.’ (Hirshfield 2015: 108). And indeed, in ‘Isotopes,’ much goes unsaid; the self-portrait is one painted in relief, in negative space, in discrepancy.

The psychogeographic link between a geographical location and the behaviour and emotions of individuals is crucial in my poetry’s dialogical preoccupation with landscape and selfhood/self-identity, particularly in the context of memory. There are specific recurring themes and open questions throughout this body of work. As Hirsch notes, postmemory work is therefore not merely recollection but, moreover, its own wholly new creative endeavour. This theoretical grounding is present in my poetics. My poems engage with the concept of memory as a site of enquiry unto itself, not merely as a vessel for holding and recollecting specific memories. This is frequently manifested in self-portraiture poems that are framed through the language of the visual. ‘Memory is not a jagged line / but a vicissitude,’ I write in ‘Returning to Cape Point.’ There is another declarative statement later in the same poem, this one imbued with a Debordian ‘psychic weight’: ‘Landscape is a library, a haunting.’ The poem’s speaker visits a nature reserve heavy with memory and emotional weight, observes the animal kingdom’s natural ruthlessness and attempts to parse her core self amidst this environment. Who is haunting whom, I wonder? Of course, the landscape haunts the speaker of the poem – but, as the poet, am I also an apparition upon the landscape? In ‘Telling the Truth,’ the relationship between the self and landscape is again complicated; the dry, deserted landscape is not easily digestible and is open to interpretation: ‘A rusted oil drum, propped on bricks— / whatever that means too.’ Dreamlike, the environment is full of implied meaning yet resists neat categorisation. The poem ends: ‘I see a snake in a dream. / Be honest: / Did you think I knew what the meaning was? / Do you think I know what I want?’

According to Hirsch, postmemory exists within the paradigm of post-traumatic memory, which leads me to the ecological underpinnings of my manuscript. Stef Craps, of Ghent University’s Cultural Memory Studies Initiative, refers to literature and art as a ‘cultural laboratory for articulating and dealing with grief related to environmental loss’ (2023: 5). I think here of Glenn Albrecht’s neologism, solastalgia: a word which describes the ‘feeling of psychic distress caused by negative environmental change’ (2020: 9). This ‘war of the emotions’ (2020: 9), as Albrecht puts it, is at the heart of my work; through a poetics of feminist self-portraiture, framed as it is by the concepts of postmemory and psychogeography, I am writing a poetics of loss. Speaking from a feminist and Indigenous North American perspective, bearing in mind the history of genocide and land destruction and dispossession that Native Americans have suffered, Eliza Rodriguez y Gibson speaks about a poetics of loss that recognises:

That what is past is not merely past, but immanent in everyday experience. Loss itself becomes its own sort of presence. Loss becomes a means of connection that enables … poets to imagine a community that does not demand the presence of an authentic origin’(2003: 27).

As an alternative method to achieve ‘this balance, this sense of connection between place and cultural identity,’ she proposes ‘that a sense of belonging to multiple places can be developed in spite of, or because of, this dispossession’ (Rodriguez y Gibson 2003: 9). In the context of the current climate crisis, where eventually everyone will be affected personally in some way by ecological loss or devastation, this idea is applicable beyond the scope in which Rodriguez y Gibson writes it. In much the same way, my poetry is preoccupied with the complexities of understanding the environment and belonging within it. Relatedly, Rodriguez y Gibson argues that literary representations of place fundamentally shape our sense of belonging— and that, in the face of ‘anxieties around creating and imagining communities, alternative ways of engaging … historical losses, of life and of land, need to be explored’ (2003: 23). Much of my poetry is and does precisely this, framed through the lens of feminist self-portraiture. In my poems, the speaker’s self—and often the poet’s self—is reflected and rendered evident through her relationship to the Earth: variously observing its embrace, its capacity to exemplify the trappings of memory, and/or its ecological devastation.

This is evident in ‘Arcadia’ and ‘Fife,’ two self-reflexive poems set in the geographic and temporal space of coastal Scotland, where colour palettes serve as visual signifiers of self-portraiture within the context of place and identity. ‘It’s summer of a different year. / I am once again refracting: / reunion of foam sargasso aquamarine,’ I write in ‘Fife.’ It is an antipodean echo of ‘Arcadia’s winter palette in the same place: ‘Instead a vignette / of ash, charcoal, indigo. December / chose to end.’ In both, the description of a geographic place serves as an articulation of the internal landscape, of psychogeography. ‘I felt unwise, too clean; / I wanted to be altered, wrung to dry,’ ‘Arcadia’ concludes; the poem’s self-portrait, of a young woman in flux, comes into view. Likewise, ‘Fife’ ends with a self-referential look backwards: ‘behemoth oil rigs far out of view / thank god my younger self is still here.’

Elsewhere, in ‘Short Film,’ the language of self-portraiture is even more overt, moving from the painterly realm of colour palettes into the technical language of photography: precise and clipped, yet softened with sibilance, smoothing the gaze. ‘See me, / aperture wide,’ and ‘slow salt of focal length,’ I write, and later, ‘I thought I had / cropped the shot tight enough. I thought I held / the rig…. Your absence, depth of field.’ Here, language becomes a mechanism for postmemory —through which the speaker investigates her various loci of positionality. In my poem, I hear an echo of Codjoe’s poem, which begins with the line ‘I don’t like being photographed,’ and ends with the line: ‘I remember thinking, My body is a lens/I can look through with my mind’ (Codjoe 2022: 4). In writing ‘Short Film,’ I was particularly interested in the ways we gaze upon and frame ourselves and our relationships in conversation with the Earth: in this case, against a scale of deep time, and in the context of duelling experiences of grief and wonder. Personal loss and pleasure are framed on a planetary scale, hyperbolised to epochs.

While many of my poems invoke the more-than-human world in the context of psychogeography, ‘Earthsong’ tackles ecological mourning more directly. I wrote this poem after a devastating mountain wildfire swept across my adopted hometown of Cape Town, South Africa. It came within several hundred meters of my home, destroyed an invaluable African Studies archive at my alma mater, the University of Cape Town, and left a trail of scorched Earth and ecological damage. The extent of the fire’s damage was largely due to the prevalence of invasive pine trees, planted in Dutch colonial times, which carried the blaze further than Indigenous flora would have allowed. ’When the burn ends / I press my body against scorched soil— / shallow pine roots ripe with unbelonging,’ I write. The speaker’s understanding of her bodily self is tied inextricably to the natural world in the post-memorial wake of ecological loss – effectively rendering solastalgia a mode of self-portraiture. ‘Kinship lies beyond indifference and care,’ the poem begins: a statement that the poem proceeds to explore through psychogeographic portraiture. ‘I need a love that survives,’ the poem ends: a self-reflexive response to this statement, albeit an ambiguous one. In ‘Devotion,’ too, the physical body is framed in the context of envelopment in environment: ‘I want the ocean to be / louder. I want to be more / a part of the sky. I want / to get good at being held.’ In this list of demands, the demarcating line between the physical self, the emotional self, and the natural world is blurred. All of these, on some level, are sites for the shapes ‘our bodies make / to enact love.’ The speaker is sculpted by her actions in relation to the natural world. This—as the manuscript currently stands—is the closing poem of the collection: a fitting conclusion to a body of work concerned with the interplay between environment and self-portraiture.

Snake Season is, as I write this, still a work-in-progress. Some spaces need to be further fleshed out to push the themes and motifs I’ve written about here into new and brave directions. Yet already certain truths feel clear: that every poem I write is an imperfect, necessary effort; it is a placeholder for perfect words that will never arrive; it is a psychogeography; a self-portrait gesturing toward, or excavating, some part of my self; a negotiation of belonging; a memorial; a landscape, shifting and changing and being changed. Framing is a map: I see the concepts I’ve laid out in this reflection as trail markers by which to read and contextualise the work of other women poets—before, now, and after me—who are preoccupied, whether overtly or implicitly, by similar themes and issues.

Returning to Cape Point

It is a relief to diverge due east

to Buffelsbaai. Warm weightless water.

Memory is not a jagged line

but a vicissitude. Around lunchtime,

I spy a seal gripping an octopus

with its teeth. Shaking it—again, again.

Remember when we swam in the lagoon,

how sand caught in my camera?

We slept at noon, through the heat of the day.

Atop the duvet—we always kept things pristine.

Landscape is a library, a haunting.

I ache for who I was with you,

or who I was before that. I keep thinking

of the octopus. Still grasping.

Arcadia

After Linda Gregg

On a bench at West Sands, waiting for sunset

between tangles of lavender heather.

Sunset did not come that day. Instead a vignette

of ash, charcoal, indigo. December

chose to end. Then January, motionless between

palms at the Musée du Batha, seared by

assaying sun. I felt unwise, too clean;

I wanted to be altered, wrung to dry.

Fife

It’s raining when I return,

North Street slick with cobbles,

my desire lines legible once more:

the same minor blessings

I yearned for     at nineteen

the sea haar tastes of self-doubt

dripping down my throat.

I swallow it fondly

this familiar tickle,

cloying yet beloved:     a remnant

this morning on the Coastal Path:

amber gorse adorned with dew,

murmuration of oystercatchers,

heather sprawled over fields.

Climbing paddock gates     as we used to

chase age, wisdom, cheap drinks.

Now finally basalt emerging     from sand:

the Rock and Spindle, upright

like a question,     or a raised fist

cosseted briefly in midair.

It’s summer of a different year.

I am once again refracting:

reunion of     foam    sargasso    aquamarine

behemoth oil rigs far out of view

thank god     my younger self is still here

Telling the Truth

The scent of honeysuckle. Whatever

that means. A rusted oil drum, propped on bricks—

whatever that means too. Hay bales stacked loose.

Farmhouse lying empty, a floral tile

reading Casa cinco de enero

at the door, and even this sags in heat,

hangs by one nail. Shed full of saws creaking.

Porch swing, wheelbarrow, abandoned Opel

on dirt track, foil draped across windscreen,

terraced crop rows—landscape quilted and stitched.

I see a snake in a dream. Be honest:

Did you think I knew what the meaning was?

Do you think I know what I want?

Isotopes

To put a name on love is to define

a prism by its lack. There’s the risk

of unfair assessment. Back then we spoke

about the truth in memory: I said

that it is inherently subjective.

You craved certainty: some hard, central

core to draw out and carbon date. Both of

us speaking empirically, and both wrong.

Short Film

(I)

Pleasure is cold fruit, the choice to eat it.

See me,

aperture wide,

that I appear

to be sprawled across the quaternary,

elaborately a part of the world.

After anticipation, swallowing

streams of juice.

So life is about pleasure:

the exploded view.

In the desert, there are

small delights: vygies blooming headstrong,

my sticky hand pitting cherry stone from

sternum, depositing in ochre clay.

I would not call this overwrought.

I would

choose you again.

(II)

Yes, I dared witness my delight.

No, I could not pronounce love.

I painted your landscape;

my canvas sits still     on your shelf.

There is a truth you withheld,

but pleasure in the wound

of not knowing. When I say I ache,

I trust, I recall the contours

of rugged sandstone, I taste

the slow salt of focal length,

I nearly      grasp you. Can there be

a gift that is not selfish?

(III)

I see myself

moving through you.

My new lover, away in Europe, says

I’m in his dreams,

but I cannot reconcile myself

to two places

at once. My anger is a molten core,

gives no pleasure,

blooms heady. I wake in the scrim of dawn

to alpenglow

as old fury whets upon skin. Winter

begins its hard scrum:

edging to break out from a long stillness.

I thought I had

cropped the shot tight enough. I thought I held

the rig. Not so.

Once, I chose you. You, the framing device

I still pass through;

your absence, depth of field. There is so much

blood in me yet.

Earthsong

Kinship lies beyond indifference and care.

I used to misunderstand the texture of my beloveds.

Now I grip them intimately—tenor of birds, silver trees

coruscating in lush breeze. Gravity’s hard embrace.

Yet we never live in tandem. The heat of sandstone

becomes belligerent. When the burn ends,

I press my body against scorched soil—

shallow pine roots ripe with unbelonging,

invasive, too eager to self-immolate—

blackened signet of the fragmented colony.

For a moment, illuminated by snakelike flame,

I had felt the relief of release, germination—

but the grey thrum of morning is heavy with smoke.

Students lift boxes from rubble like ants in a chain.

Water, airlifted down from tabletop dams

as body recognises body, as form soothes form.

Histories are triaged in cold storage,

the practice of archive inert and charred,

loss engendering, here, a certain tenderness—

this, the unwelcome labour of unbecoming.

So late in the season for such vehemence,

I was unprepared for the fire.

See how I’m capable of falling my way forward.

We are quanta laughing in the dark. I need love that survives.

Devotion

I want the ocean to be

louder. I want to be more

a part of the sky. I want

to get good at being held.

I want you to stroke my cheek

and keep your hand there. The flat

palm of your left hand. My flesh

a skittish horse; ferrous, frothed.

All these shapes our bodies make

to enact love. I swan dive

blind into cyan—yes,

sculpting. That’s what I mean.