I wanted to-- one of the questions
that I want to ask you is, I had a good moment the other day
with a student where we were having
that slightly embarrassing conversation about people's
poetry careers.
And I was like--
we were talking about people that often find an idea,
and really fully explore it.
And I was saying how that's a really interesting way
for being a poet in the world might be the way
to put it without the gross career part of it.
And I was giving you as this example when I was talking
about the journal, Ecopoetics.
And the student immediately said to me, she's like,
but it's always disclaiming the term Ecopoetics.
I mean, then we had this-- well, I'm like, he's complicating it.
And then this piece that you sent me,
I had this great couple of months reading a lot of work
by Jonathan in preparation for this event,
but the statement for New Nature Writing
where you have these four.
You're kind of like these four very elaborate categories
that get away from, let's say, the brand term Ecopoetics.
And really insist on that we have a more complicated
terminology here.
And the journal itself also feels like it's doing that.
Like it's saying, I'm going to stick this in,
and I'm going to stick this in, and I'm going to stick this in.
And I think it's a question about what's that strategy?
What are you doing with that?
Well, I remember trying to find the name for the journal
and I think I came up with like 150 different possibilities.
And all these artsy sounding things like rampike, and kudzu,
and--
my good friend, Michael Keller, said to me,
why don't you just call it Ecopoetics?
I was like, but I'll be stuck with Ecopoetics
for the rest of my life, and he just looked at me
and said, well, suck it up.
But that idea of staking the middle was actually--
it was a bold strategy and I was shocked
that there was no title.
But there was no publication at the time
with that rubric, Ecopoetics.
But I did-- I think what I liked about it in the end was that it
was very open and undefined.
So that I was able to use it precisely as a site.
And to really kind of put out the bird seed,
or point the way to the tinaja and see who she would show up.
So I've thought of it as a kind of watering hole.
And really, I mean, the response to it has been amazing
and I've gotten a lot of work from poets I'd never heard of,
or people I've never met.
And I had great correspondences with writers I haven't yet met.
People kind of came out of the woodwork for it,
so I don't know if it was a strategy so much
as a kind of dance that I felt I was doing.
Following one's gut and not wanting to be too programmatic,
and trying to create this edge and sense of juxtaposition.
And I like Ecopoetics has house and it has making in it.
So "oikos" the Greek word for house, so it's--
I think of it as like the original home-ec.
Ecopoetics, house making, how to make ourselves--
We're learning late, as a species,
to be at home on this planet.
How can we make ourselves at home?
And there's many different ways of doing that as there
are people on the planet.
But the challenge is for it not to be merely eclectic.
How does one kind of keep it taught
and I think I've learned a lot from the British minimalists.
And if there's been an aesthetic to the journal,
it's been that kind of tradition of landscape minimalism
amongst the British writers and artists of just providing
a simple frame that then allows whatever
comes to it to flourish.
I mean, that might be my follow up
question, which is one about this question of inclusivity.
We've had a lot of back and forth about like--
I sometimes shorthand it as the March of the Penguins problem.
Like they complain about the movie March of the Penguins
is like, we watch the Penguins on their epic journey
with absolutely no conversation about the ecological disaster
that's there, infecting them very, very dramatically.
Food shortages.
And so I mean, it's that kind of question like--
Have you felt like you've had to have a limit,
or is there a bad--
is there a bad poet, is there a poetry that covers up for us?
How do we negotiate that terrain,
or are there certain rules for a good eco poetry, or?
Well, again, I don't think--
I'm not sure, and then you say I disclaim it.
I don't believe in eco poetry.
I'm not sure there's such a thing as an eco poem or an eco
poet.
I mean, all good poetry is eco, is it not in some way?
Or even just in its own complexity.
So that's why I stuck with that kind of fancy term Ecopoetics.
This reflection on.
And I think my strategy again, if it
could be called a strategy, for the journal has
been to find something good.
And if there's something I like and it speaks to me,
or there's sometimes--
There's a case where there's something
that it might not be--
like if I were editing a strict literary journal,
I might not accept-- it might-- maybe
it's not sort of the best kind of poem as a poem,
but it's speaking to something that needs to be
a part of the conversation.
So there's different feeding niches
in the journal and different kinds of-- different levels
of which writers are operating and thinking.
And so I can address what you might
call the deficiency in a piece by placing it
next to another piece that somehow--
So it's to me-- it's less about showcasing individual talent
and more about the relations between the works,
and the conversation that happens between the pieces.
Well, that's it.
I mean, it really was--
I'm very suspicious of that kind of Gregory Bateson
Ecology of Mind, but it is true that I
think with the journal I was probably really addressing
a crisis within the ecology of poetry itself.
I mean, it was as much that as addressing
these environmental problems that
had these different camps that weren't talking to one another.
And there's just something-- why were the performance poets not
talking to the page poets, or why are the language poets not
listening to rap, or it just--
Yeah.
That myopic separation.
And then I just want to-- maybe we can end with this question
about composition, which is--
you didn't read that Katrina piece, which
I love that you've given me.
But one thing that struck me in that piece
is like, there's that moment when
you're saying like, go out and visit the wetlands.
I mean, which you're always kind of like, get yourself out
and then in your classes, you're sending students out.
And yet also in that Katrina piece-- and you did this
also in this reading tonight where you were like,
I was reading the field guide.
And there's like the listing of books.
And so I just wanted to maybe talk some about research,
or how that is part of your compositional practice,
or like it's-- because it's not all just observation for you
in the way that we might be like the pure nature poetry in some
way.
There's a lot-- you're doing something else.
Well, it's field-based, so there has
to be, for me, a conversation between the field guide
and the field, for example.
I mean, a field guide is only as good as your use of it
in the field.
And I like-- my favorite motto is the artist Hamish Fulton--
British artist, another British artist.
Hamish Fulton-- no walk, no work.
So that on the one hand, there is, yes.
There's a lot of research now.
There's so many ways it can be done online with field guides,
through great teachers, courses that are available to us.
But then to take that out into the field,
or to go out on the field with a master naturalist,
or something.
Like to learn to forage and identify
mushrooms and then take one--
when you are confident enough, you learn the fool proof four,
to take one of those species back and cook it, and eat it.
And I don't know if it's like David Buuck
eating the toxic soil from the barge
from the island in the Bay Area, but that it's research,
but it's practical.
So it's a kind of a research in the field.
I don't know if this is answering your question.
Actually maybe that would be the follow up, which is--
I mean, what is the relationship between something
like that and David Buuck eating the toxic soil,
or the toxic soil, or--
Well, actually for him it's a performance, I think.
But for me, the poem--
missing part of my answer was that the poem
comes in as the kind of strange attractor
that allows this research to constellate.
And for me, it's not just about adding a bird to my list
or somehow acquiring knowledge that I
can impress my friends with when they come here for dinner.
That's always nice, but sometimes they get scared.
But it's the poem.
The poem then becomes a kind of attractor
that holds this learning.
And perhaps, my hope is would make it accessible to others,
or inspire others to go out and do the same themselves.
So it's a way of configuring research
and it makes it active.
It makes the knowledge active for me.
Thank you.
Thank you, Juliana.