The call of home and trans-corporeal possibility in the poetry of Tracy Ryan

A longing for home re-occurs across Tracy Ryan’s poetry yet remains unsatisfied. Focusing on the relationship between the human and more-than-human, she instead illuminates place as shaped by complex interrelations and movement. In demonstrating how place is a meeting place mediated through multiple perspectives, Ryan offers an alternative to the way a relation to land has been understood through the lens of patriarchal colonialism. This essay considers how Ryan connects a personal genealogy to broader patterns of cultural displacement and begins to investigate the potential of trans-corporeal feminism in light of migration and settler legacies. Beginning with an analysis of homelessness in Ryan’s early work, the essay then turns to a more detailed analysis of her 2015 collection, Hoard, as the point where she turns towards the possibilities of a situated transcorporeality.