Biography
Jessica Radicic is a second year PhD student at Claremont School of Theology focusing on the philosophy of religion and theology. Her research interests include theopoetics, liberation theologies, and Christian ethics. Her current projects include a poetry chapbook and a collaborative autoethnography focusing on methodologies of the oppressed.
Paper Abstract
“If a Body Falls in a Forest” is a narrative poem that speaks to the entanglement of social and ecological injustices by looking to the fracking invasion that traumatically altered many sacred spaces/homes. At the height of the fracking boom that took place in the mid-2000s, gas companies invaded small, rural communities, often taking advantage of the poor with misleading promises of large monetary compensation for selling or leasing their mineral rights. Contextualized in rural Southwest Pennsylvania, this poem weaves together themes of commodifying living entities, the silencing and stigmatization of the poor, and the weaponization of hope by drawing on the author’s childhood memories and childlike compassion. In leaning into our inherent creative potential and interconnectedness with all of creation, may we heal without becoming root bound and grow without becoming uprooted.