Vertical travel, the sense of place, and the environmentalism of the poor: climate change in Frank Smith’s Katrina: Isle de Jean Charles, Louisiane

ABSTRACT Frank Smith is a contemporary French author who is known for his poetic writing style, social activism, and attention to detail. This chapter examines Smith’s unconventional approach to the representation of the environmental uncanny he witnesses during his journeys to Louisiana where rising tides and climate change threaten a small island community in the bayous, that of the Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw Native Americans, America’s first climate refugees. The author depicts the non-human and human agency of a complex environmental crisis through figurative and literal forms of verticality. His approach to vertical travel, dwelling, and the fractal diversity of the everyday resonates with Ursula Heise’s descriptions of situated knowledge, sensory perception, and physical immersion as foundations for a sense of place that will be explored here through various types of fragments evident in his work.