What is Ecopoetry and why write it?
We know the planet is in trouble, right? We hear every day on the news about wildfires, floods, landslides, extinctions and droughts and every month that passes is the hottest month on record. And while we can’t argue with this (and the 97% of scientists who corroborate it) it also seems very difficult to know what we can do about it in our everyday lives that will make a measurable difference. Is buying a takeaway cup really going to change anything in the face of all these terrifying facts or will the planet go on melting at the same rate it already was?
After that rather gloomy and futile start to this piece, I’m going to suggest something radically optimistic: write about it. Write about your everyday experience of what is changing in the world around you and the environmental issues you feel passionate about. Because while facts feel slippery and inaccessible and make us feel helpless, experiences can help us understand the world from our own perspective, and artists of all kinds can create experiences better than anyone else. As Jorie Graham puts it:
‘[Readers] feel they “know this information already, so why do they need it in a poem.” That is precisely the point. They “know” it. They are not “feeling it.” That is what activists in the environmental movement are asking of us: help it be felt, help it be imagined.’
But haven’t poets been writing ecopoetry for centuries? Wasn’t this what Wordsworth was up to with those daffodils? Not quite. Nature for the Romantic poets was all about fuel for the imagination. Really The Daffodils is all about memory, about how the daffodils are bringing pleasure to the human mind or ‘inward eye’ in the present of the poem. It is much more about how nature benefits the human than about how nature might exist on its own, or have its own voice.
Similarly, in a lot of contemporary lyric poems the natural world becomes a metaphor for something human. Take the stunning poem by Niall Campbell, The Day The Whales Beached which does exactly this. The whales in the poem are juxtaposed against the human beings; the whales’ deaths emphasise the tragedy of the humans’. It would be an entirely different poem were the humans not there, but it would be more of an ecopoem.
Eco-poetry, then, in the sense I’m talking about, takes the human and the natural world as undeniably connected and does not prioritise one over the other. The human and natural worlds are not exclusive of one another, and the natural is not something to be ‘conquered.’ Eco-poetry does not centre on a human viewpoint; it is inclusive of plant, animal, landscape. It can make us look at the experiences of the life we share the planet with in a completely new way.
A writing exercise: try flipping your viewpoint to something else’s: a plant, an animal, a landscape. How does its view of the world differ to yours? Does it see differently, hear differently, smell differently? Does it have experiences that you as a human might have no words to express? Is it time to make up some new words?
A short reading list:
- Garry MacKenzie’s piece on this blog about writing Mountains.
- John Shoptaw ‘Why Ecopoetry?’ on the Poetry Foundation website.
- Jorie Graham, Place, Carcanet Press 2014
- Timothy Morton Being Ecological Pelican Books 2017
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A great post and I love the exciting writing exercise! Thanks Suzannah.
Great ideas here, Suzannah, and it follows Gary McKenzie’s blog and mine on prose poetry where I refer to Anne Caldwell’s interview about prose poetry being the best form for eco-poetry. It can be found here:
https://pagechatter.org/
There is a lot I like in this piece of writing such as the statement that “the natural is not something to be ‘conquered” (Goethe would have disagreed it seems). However, the suggestion that “every month that passes is the hottest month on record” is actually flippant and fuels the argument that climate protesters are crying wolf. I think there is a place in nature writing where creativity can sit alongside science not undermine it. I came to this piece of writing as a student and hence it is not for me to criticise too much but I do consider that art and science can work alongside each other harmoniously. Leonardo Da Vinci managed it and am sure there are contemporary artists who do … just cannot recall any at present unless photographers are also to be included in which case Edward Burtynsky is a classic example.
While you are not technically speaking wrong, you are pretty wide of the mark and whilst not a linear progression, this visualisation of the data from 1850 to present shows temperature progression on a month by month basis to support the argument.
https://twitter.com/neilrkaye/status/1349771090403454993?s=12
Just to confirm, that statement isn’t intended to be flippant, it is for the most part based on real data.
One will almost always be disappointed when searching for ‘Wildlife Poetry’ on the Internet that it does not attempt to accurately portray wild animals and places, etc. as they are in real life. I can’t in this small space provide an example, but one reader who commented on my work stated that my putting science/natural history into verse was a first for him. Others have said that I write from the heart, but I do not use animals as human characters. My writing allows me to transport my mind away from my present circumstances in order to find peace.
‘Confusion’ expresses aptly how chaotic your little flock is seen
As it searches for bugs among leaves, some turned tan, others still green.
A spritelike Myrtle Yellow-rumped Warbler, you brighten my afternoon
Spent watching birds and wondering, knowing, you’ll fly south too soon.
Perching fleetingly on a white cedar, showing your subtle plumage of fall,
You converse with your fellow bug hunters with a sharp ‘chep’ call.
Deciduous leaves turn yellow and drop, looking crinkled and brown.
We must wait till next spring to see your flashy butt, flanks, and crown.
For now you’ll stay on, glean and hawk insects and spiders in scarce number,
Eating berries, fruit, and seeds until you depart as bare trees slumber.
Nature celebrates the passing of the breeding season with colour and flair,
But it won’t be the same at all for a woodland walk when you’re not there.
Calling all poets! It’s a little over three months since I wrote my piece, and no one has commented since then. Come on, where are all you creative people?
Hi Murray!
Hello stopapupa
hello huyapopa
Sorry, our internet is spotty here in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, but just wanted to let you know that I would like to use your poem with our Year 8 English Lit class. Thank you, it’s lovely.
Emily
Sorry, our internet is spotty here in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, but just wanted to let you know that I would like to use your poem with our Year 8 English Lit class. Thank you, it’s lovely.
Emily
Hello Professor Murray, just want to ask you a friendly question.
How long did it take you to write this.