What would the wind write if it could write poetry?

Credits: CBC Arts

In this collaboration between nature and technology, Indigenous artist Tania Willard creates poetry using wind.

This past summer, the shoreline of an industrial part of Mississauga played home to an exhibition that lasted ten short days. Called The Work of Wind: Air, Land, Sea, it included artists that responded to climate change, the impact of humans on the environment and the strength of nature.

Artist Tania Willard’s installation Liberation of the Chinook Wind called special attention to the power of nature, enlisting windsocks and the Institute of Communication, Culture, Information and Technology at the University of Toronto Mississauga. The wind became a poet, actually creating verses generated by the windsocks and the coding by the UofT team.

Why do it? As you’ll see in this video by filmmakers Istoica, Willard explains that the wind has a lot to tell us. Her installation speaks to a history of the water populated by Chinook salmon, claims upon the land and water, and the strong relationship between people and nature. As she says: “If the wind can write poetry, then what is the wind saying to us at other times?”

“Can we listen to the wind going through the leaves of that tree and understand a language, understand a poem, understand a prophecy?”

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