WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:00.835 align:middle line:90% 00:00:00.835 --> 00:00:02.460 align:middle line:84% I'm going to introduce Jonathan Skinner 00:00:02.460 --> 00:00:05.852 align:middle line:84% by talking only about myself, which I'm going to apologize. 00:00:05.852 --> 00:00:07.560 align:middle line:84% Although the story that I'm going to tell 00:00:07.560 --> 00:00:10.140 align:middle line:84% is basically sort of what I've learned 00:00:10.140 --> 00:00:12.660 align:middle line:84% from Jonathan's work, which I think 00:00:12.660 --> 00:00:15.300 align:middle line:84% is actually kind of an exemplary example. 00:00:15.300 --> 00:00:16.860 align:middle line:84% I think I'm not the only poet that's 00:00:16.860 --> 00:00:22.620 align:middle line:84% learned a lot from his multidimensional work. 00:00:22.620 --> 00:00:24.510 align:middle line:84% Like his editing work and his poetry work 00:00:24.510 --> 00:00:26.250 align:middle line:90% and his critical work. 00:00:26.250 --> 00:00:28.260 align:middle line:84% But the story goes like this which 00:00:28.260 --> 00:00:31.350 align:middle line:84% was that I was for many years a poet who was well schooled 00:00:31.350 --> 00:00:33.180 align:middle line:90% in experimental traditions. 00:00:33.180 --> 00:00:34.783 align:middle line:84% And I barely thought about any sort 00:00:34.783 --> 00:00:37.200 align:middle line:84% of writing that wasn't written in the modernist tradition. 00:00:37.200 --> 00:00:40.050 align:middle line:84% And because the modernist tradition is so urban, 00:00:40.050 --> 00:00:42.480 align:middle line:84% I barely thought about nature poetry 00:00:42.480 --> 00:00:44.997 align:middle line:84% because there was a divide between this idea 00:00:44.997 --> 00:00:47.580 align:middle line:84% that there's no nature in urban areas, which one of the things 00:00:47.580 --> 00:00:51.580 align:middle line:84% that Jonathan is constantly telling us otherwise. 00:00:51.580 --> 00:00:54.060 align:middle line:84% And I think if I had thought about this poetry, 00:00:54.060 --> 00:00:56.820 align:middle line:84% I probably would have thought that it was not of my concern, 00:00:56.820 --> 00:01:00.750 align:middle line:84% that this was the kind of thing that those beats influenced 00:01:00.750 --> 00:01:02.520 align:middle line:84% by the Eastern traditions, like Gary 00:01:02.520 --> 00:01:06.240 align:middle line:84% Snyder, or the lyrical poets of what I probably would have 00:01:06.240 --> 00:01:08.850 align:middle line:84% dismissed at the time as like the suburban pastoral, 00:01:08.850 --> 00:01:11.490 align:middle line:84% like that was their material, and my material 00:01:11.490 --> 00:01:12.610 align:middle line:90% was something else. 00:01:12.610 --> 00:01:15.750 align:middle line:84% And I think I was seeing myself as two things that 00:01:15.750 --> 00:01:19.170 align:middle line:84% had no use for some of the discussion that happens 00:01:19.170 --> 00:01:22.470 align:middle line:84% around eco poetry and around nature poetry, whichever 00:01:22.470 --> 00:01:24.630 align:middle line:84% term you kind of want to use, which 00:01:24.630 --> 00:01:26.820 align:middle line:84% is that I was rural industrial by birth 00:01:26.820 --> 00:01:30.720 align:middle line:84% and then I was kind of urban by choice as an adult. 00:01:30.720 --> 00:01:31.920 align:middle line:90% And then this is-- 00:01:31.920 --> 00:01:34.420 align:middle line:84% I feel like these are the kind of presumptions that Jonathan 00:01:34.420 --> 00:01:38.310 align:middle line:84% has worked throughout his kind of career to kind of tear down. 00:01:38.310 --> 00:01:42.120 align:middle line:84% And as editor of the journal Ecopoetics, 00:01:42.120 --> 00:01:45.330 align:middle line:84% he's kind of been very insistent that the planet 00:01:45.330 --> 00:01:48.570 align:middle line:84% needs the attention of all sorts of poetry. 00:01:48.570 --> 00:01:50.760 align:middle line:84% That this is a kind of fruitful way 00:01:50.760 --> 00:01:53.730 align:middle line:84% of thinking for all different sorts of poets. 00:01:53.730 --> 00:01:57.500 align:middle line:84% And that this kind of issue of the environmental collapse 00:01:57.500 --> 00:02:00.450 align:middle line:84% so defines this time needs all of our brains 00:02:00.450 --> 00:02:05.340 align:middle line:84% and all of our attentions and all of our poetic forms. 00:02:05.340 --> 00:02:07.710 align:middle line:84% And I mean I also feel that his work is kind of well 00:02:07.710 --> 00:02:09.780 align:middle line:84% aware of this kind of special status 00:02:09.780 --> 00:02:11.910 align:middle line:84% that the natural world has to poetry. 00:02:11.910 --> 00:02:15.150 align:middle line:84% That it's a genre that in its tradition 00:02:15.150 --> 00:02:17.910 align:middle line:84% has long held this kind of irreplaceable knowledge 00:02:17.910 --> 00:02:20.760 align:middle line:84% of plants and animals and winds and currents. 00:02:20.760 --> 00:02:24.840 align:middle line:84% That it's kind of held within it and it's not held necessarily 00:02:24.840 --> 00:02:28.650 align:middle line:84% in other another genres and other parts of the culture. 00:02:28.650 --> 00:02:32.220 align:middle line:84% And in his own poetry which I always think of it as like it's 00:02:32.220 --> 00:02:33.720 align:middle line:90% kind of built around-- 00:02:33.720 --> 00:02:37.680 align:middle line:84% it's like attentively listening to the quiet and the loud. 00:02:37.680 --> 00:02:41.610 align:middle line:84% It's tearing down those divides between nature and culture. 00:02:41.610 --> 00:02:46.260 align:middle line:84% It's full of kind of clash and meditative lyrical space, which 00:02:46.260 --> 00:02:49.770 align:middle line:84% is what it's kind of this really shining example of all the work 00:02:49.770 --> 00:02:50.980 align:middle line:90% that poetry can do. 00:02:50.980 --> 00:02:53.280 align:middle line:90% So please welcome him. 00:02:53.280 --> 00:02:57.230 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:02:57.230 --> 00:03:01.000 align:middle line:90%