Her poems “glyphs,” “Gryllus pennsylvanicus,” and “mouton mort” appear in the forty-second issue of Touch the Donkey.
Q: Tell me about the poems “glyphs,” “Gryllus pennsylvanicus,” and “mouton mort.”
A: glyphs:
This poem is meant to make tangible and visceral the experience of becoming highly intellectually and emotionally connected with another person, even (or especially) if that connection is not romantic in nature. It attempts to capture the feeling of “reading someone’s mind” without implying there is anything extrasensory going on. That is, these two people share a soul connection, and the so-called “magic” of that connection is made real by the interaction between collections of neurons that inhabit each of the two people; although this seems at first to be a rather ordinary and material explanation for something that feels so extraordinary, the realization of this simple fact perhaps actually adds to what makes it such a magnificent experience.
Gryllus pennsylvanicus:
As you may have already figured out, the title of this poem is the scientific name for the Fall Field Cricket. I wrote this somewhat cheeky poem after a comical realization one beautiful September evening in southern Ontario, Canada, that the nostalgia we humans experience (at least across a large swath of North America, where this species lives) when we hear crickets chirping on a warm summer or autumn evening is the result of a projection of our own feelings and memories onto this auditory stimulus that is nothing more than an insect trying to find a mate and pass on its genes.
mouton mort:
This poem is based on something I experienced while conducting ornithological fieldwork on Seal Island (Nova Scotia) during my undergraduate degree. Seal Island is a fantastical place, with resident semi-feral sheep that are sheared and harvested by farmers who live on the mainland and visit only periodically. Whilst walking along the beach there one day, I stumbled across the skull of a deceased sheep and mused over how odd it felt to find the evidence of this domestic animal, in my mind usually associated with bucolic, peaceful landscapes and careful husbandry, on a rugged island beach surrounded by ocean where it had lived out its life in a relatively “wild” way. In my mind in that moment, this animal that is very familiar in life was bestowed an air of mystery by its uncharacteristically wild death of unknown causes.
Q: How do these poems compare to some of the other work you’ve been doing lately?
A: Although these poems are between 2 and 7 years old, I am still writing on many of the same themes: nature, connection, intimacy, and wonder. I have recently been experimenting with using longer stanzas and longer poems in general, to delve deeper in both my thoughts and in describing natural phenomena. I am currently working on a collection of poems that describes my observations of the natural seasonal changes that occur throughout the year in southwestern Ontario (where I'm from) and look forward to releasing them as a chronological arrangement.
Q: Have you any models for the kinds of work you’re doing? What poets or poems sit at the back of your head as you write?
A: I think the poet from whom I draw the most inspiration is Harry Thurston, with his elegant and observant descriptions of wildlife and natural phenomena. I was introduced to Thurston’s work by fellow poet and dear friend Lance La Rocque, whose poems I read to experience new, abstract ideas and thought structures that I then try to weave into my own poems. The writings of Henry David Thoreau and John Muir also never cease to inspire my Romantic / Transcendentalist tendencies by resonating with a side of my brain that is not altogether stimulated by the purely scientific writing that dominates my daily life.
Q: What first brought you to blending science and poetry? What is it specifically about the form of poetry that allows you to think through some of these concepts?
A: I think it was simply my love for science that brought me to think about it in ways more nuanced than simply how to practice it in my career or how to further expand upon scientific ideas within my discipline. More specifically, my appreciation for the beauty of biology and of life itself, and my admiration for the evolution of all the many millions of varied life forms that we have come to know as “species”, inspire me to ponder (and write) about the infinite ways in which these organisms experience the same world.
Scientists like myself (and everyone else, too, without realizing it) use the scientific method all the time as a structured way of thinking logically about how things work: make observations, develop hypotheses, test hypotheses, repeat. But writing poetry allows me to liberate and reframe my ideas on scientific topics in any number of new and experimental ways – often, these are ways that better satisfy my soul’s yearning to understand and connect with nature and the wider world.
Q: How are you finding the process of attempting to shape a first manuscript? Or are you focusing instead on each individual poem as it comes?
A: I have mostly been focusing on writing each poem as it comes. I do still try to shape them into a coherent collection as I go along though. Having a set framework and/or topic in the back of my head has been a good mental exercise in forcing myself to take notice of aspects of that topic that I otherwise might not have. But yes, the process is difficult at times! Still, I’m in no rush to produce a manuscript so I don’t feel much pressure to figure it all out at once.
Q: It would seem your poems explore an interest in writing both the abstract and the tangible. Do you find, at times, a difficult balance between the two?
A: I think the interplay between the abstract and the tangible that emerges in my writing is reflective of my organic stream of consciousness. In daily life I often reflect on everyday objects or concepts and find therein surprising hidden connections to the wider human (or animal) experience. The tangible provides the initial fodder for the abstract, and the abstract ultimately precipitates back into the tangible, but I do not necessarily make a conscious effort to balance the two in my writing.
Q: Finally, who do you read to reenergize your own work? What particular works can’t you help but return to?
A: I find that I’m most energized by and most often return to work by scientific / nature writers and poets. Examples include Charles Darwin and Rachel Carson, John Muir and Henry David Thoreau as mentioned previously, Emily Dickinson and Gary Snyder, and a number of others. Thoreau’s Walking is a favourite work that I like to return to periodically.
