Phytometamorphosis: An Ontology of Becoming in Amazonian Women’s Poetry About Plants

Metamorphosis is central to Indigenous Amazonian cosmologies, which often posit a period in the past when transformations from one being into another proliferated. This time gave way to the relative stability of the present that always runs the risk of going back to an ongoing process of transmutation. In this article, I highlight the significance of plants in Amerindian ontologies of becoming as catalysts of metamorphic movements through their entheogenic effects, through their curative properties and as the ancestors and teachers of humans. Beyond being the facilitators of other entities’ transformations and the virtual grandparents of all beings, plants are also masters of metamorphosis, displaying much more plasticity in adapting to their surroundings than animals. I argue that contemporary Amazonian women’s poetry translates the multiple transformations of vegetal life into literary form. In many Amazonian Indigenous communities, women have traditionally been the ones responsible for plant cultivation, while, in Western societies, women are often associated to certain parts of plants, such as flowers, and to nature as a whole. In the article, I analyze the poetry of Colombian author Anastasia Candre Yamacuri (1962–2014) and Peruvian writer Ana Varela Tafur (1963-), who emphasize the metamorphic potential of plants and the ontology of becoming at play in Amazonia. I contend that women’s writing on plants reflects evolving views on both plants’ and women’s roles in Amazonian societies, marked by rapid social transformation and environmental destruction.