De-extinction and poetry

Camb Prism Extinct. 2025 Dec 3;3:e14. doi: 10.1017/ext.2025.10008. eCollection 2025.

ABSTRACT

This article centres a poem concerned with the de-extinction of the thylacine (Tasmanian tiger) to make a wider claim for the importance of poetry as a distinct contribution to thinking about de-extinction. While de-extinction is well understood as a scientific practice, it is also a cultural event. It involves communities with distinct histories who are diversely invested in the idea of extinction, which evoke a range of emotions and embodied responses. A poetry of de-extinction is well placed to situate the science within its complex cultural history while evoking the resistance and multiple temporalities of recorded Indigenous experience. In the instance of the efforts towards the de-extinction of the thylacine (Tasmanian tiger), the colonial acts that led to the original extinction were one part of the violence perpetrated against Indigenous peoples and country.

PMID:41446900 | PMC:PMC12722039 | DOI:10.1017/ext.2025.10008