Writing(with) water lilies

What happens in a typical session?

• Introduction & Intentions: A brief overview of the vision behind writing (with)plants and setting a calm headspace.

• Sharing Circles: Participants share personal memories, scientific facts, folklore, or cultural stories related to plants as teachers.

• Exploring the “Guest Plant”: The group focuses on a specific plant chosen for the session (such as mugwort, olive, or local forest flora).

• Creative Invitation: A guided prompt or meditation invites participants to practice “shapeshifting” or imagining the world from the perspective of the guest plant.

• Reflection: A final sharing circle where attendees can read or discuss what they wrote or drew.

In this session

• guest plant: water lily, an ecofeminist plant
• inspired by this academic essay: Gibson, P., & Gagliano, M. (2017). The feminist plant: Changing relations with the water lily. Ethics and the Environment, 22(2), 125-147.
• We recommend to read this paper beforehand and/or to visit a pond or a botanical garden and observe the water lily for a while.
• host: Wendy Wuyts
• Technical assistance: Lisa Sattell

About water lilies

• Water lilies are floating and rooted. You cannot categorize them easily.
• In Norway, water lilies are the blood drops from a water creature called the nøkken. The Norwegian word for water lily is nøkkerose. Two years ago I wrote a blogpost about this: https://woodwidewebstories.com/2024/09/20/the-water-lily-the-serpent-and-the-nokk-an-ecofeminist-trinity/

Selected quotes from the essay by Gagliano and Gibson:

• “Water lilies flourish in clusters and hormonally communicate together within their community. They can self-reproduce and have mobility across the water surface, being both earthed and waterborne.” (p.125)
• “Vilified for being too passive, too silent, disparaged for having inferior abilities and condemned for being immobile, the water lily nevertheless defies these anthropocentric denigrations.” (p.126)
• “This lily has an idealized history as the Nymphea bride or “veiled one.” Its long, representational life has created its iconic status and its associations of purity.” (p.127)
• “The water lily’s roots nestle in the silt below the water but its leaves and flowers are mobile, floating across the reflective watery surface. Water lilies communicate chemically within their vegetal community so that they can better flourish, signaling to each other if there are adverse conditions or imminent threat.” (p130)
• “Does rootedness, then, discount these capacities of beginnings and becomings? What if humans, like the water lily, could do both? Stay rooted but also keep mobile. Plants not only move locally but across vast distances. The thirty-five species of water lilies are rooted in the soil in bodies of water but their fragrant flowers and waterproof leaves can float across the aquatic surface.” (p. 135)

Why this timing?

In some folklore from places which root in me, they say that the veil between our world and other worlds is thin around 31 October / 01 November. That is why we celebrate the death and welcome their spirits at our homes.

As the water lily is not only an ecofeminist icon, but also a hydrofeminist icon, a real shapeshifter and boundary-destroyer, she/they seem a great plant companion or familiar to share stories about visits from other worlds and boundaries.

How to register?

• This online session is for free, but we ask you to register beforehand.
• Register via this link to receive the zoom link for this session: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/PytnwIOvQ4eb1aYz3uiL3w