we’re surprised and delighted

by the Thing

which was three things

but in transit \ in the bag \ on the journey

from plant to palms

has joined itself into one Thing

 

being a gardener perhaps you know what they are?

 

 

 

 

 

yes!

head-er-ah col-cheek-ah

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

you describe yourselves as

a composite ecopoet

and your work can be

conceptual

immersive

radical

 

 

re-imagining

how the world could be

seems so deeply important right now

 

 

 

 

might the new poetic forms

you’re inventing

be the embodiment of this direction

 

 

 

 

 

 

we don’t include everything participants have written

but we select and curate with minimal editing

 

 

it sort of happens by itself

 

 

our most recent course fabric-ation

is all about the slip back to source

because every workshop

took participants back

to a moth

or plant

or tree

or animal

or plankton

 

 

 

and we worked back to that source

energetically

 

 

 

 

or that of all the eider farmers around the world

only Icelandic farmers harvest their eiderdown

from the abandoned nests of the duck?

sadly farmers elsewhere often pluck the down

from live birds

harmfully

 

 

 

 

 

often the largely forgotten

often the colonial

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

yes, I experienced that on

your Changing Everything Carefully course I came to

in the tiny Look Out tower on the beach at Aldeburgh

 

 

 

you had created a space where poem became a verb

and ‘poeming’ was possible as a group

 

 

 

 

 

 

on the first day the room was cosy and deep

the room was dark

the theme was descending into the abyss

 

 

 

 

 

 

we were being inverted

through visual prompts

and meanwhile kin’d was reading a poem out

in that intimate space

 

 

on the second day

we came back to the room

to find there was a wall of glass

with a full view of the beach and sea!

the theme was surfacing

and light poured in

startling and energising us

 

 

 

 

both days we wrote collectively

and collaboratively

we shared our work in ways that

created new poems from our fragments

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

as participants

we didn’t talk to each other much

perhaps when we were performing elements

but there was an energetic transfer

of something sensuously written

in our collaboration

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

yes, we’re re-wilding form

and the new ones arise

organically

out of the place

out of the themes

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

each workshop is made for that place

and that moment

 

 

we like Jonathan Skinner’s concept

of po-ethics

where writing can

lean in to

the non-human

to make with nature

 

 

we took one fabric each week

 and went wild

 

 

 

not that we told the participants!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

then new forms started arising

 

like at the Knepp re-wilding project5

we needed

a ballad of the wild land

a migratory villanelle

 

 

until all that loosened writing we’d been doing

needed to be brought back in somehow

 

 

 

we’re not allowed to walk free

like the animals

 

 

 

 

 

 talking of constraint

is it significant

that the name kin’d & kin’d

is un-gendered?

 

 

 

 

we don’t deliberately present as non-gendered

we are just aiming to privilege

the non-individual

and our non-human ‘kin’

 

 

 

and we don’t present our work as feminist

although we are

 

 

our real subject is eco poetry

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

yes, connections

with other beings

in an attitude of kindness

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I might counter that by saying

that it is precisely

these things including

your age, your gender and your approach

that make your work radical!

 

we do make the workshops outward facing

with an emphasis on ‘being with’

rather than the being

 

we’re doing it because it seems to be needed

so in that way, it’s sort of doing us

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

in our latest anthology of participants’ writing

the prefaces blend into their poems

like the whole book is one fabric

 

 

 

 

because we can be a bit mad

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

coming from different knowledge bases

and disciplines has proved really fruitful

 

 

 

 

 

 

I’m a novelist and editor as well as poet

 and what comes with that is

long hours of being alone

of being rather pernickety and forensic

an interest in the literary form itself

 

 

 

 

 

 

whereas for me to break out

and allow all this free work has been so exciting

 

we’re also steeped in poetry

and we read a lot on the same political topics

but from very different sources

 

 

 

and The Ecopoetry Anthology

which is mostly American poems

but takes you right from Emily Dickinson

through to the early 2010s in ecopoetry

 

 

 

poets from the canon who actually resonate

like Gerard Manley Hopkins

 

we draw from a great range of poetry

always trying to keep abreast of the new ones

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

and I’ll say we can’t!

we can’t ask the participants to do that!

 

we’re extremely grateful to all our participants

and proud of their willingness to experiment

to collaborate and surrender

to some very unusual requests and approaches

creatively, we constrain as well as release each other

where I constrain kin’d

by writing a preface

she will loosen me

by suggesting mad things

 

 

 

 

I’ve collaborated with other people

 in the past but it’s always been an ‘alongside’

like working in response to a painter or musician

but in our first collaboration as kin’d & kin’d

all our ideas were merged

 

 

 

 

maybe playful surprises

can only really occur in partnership?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

like limbslendering or stranning

which came directly from the body’s action

of reaching

 

 

 

follow us into the wildness of language

and re-imagine our engagement with

the nonhuman

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I would describe you as two people converging

like a cradle and holding all these other people

 

days and days of experimenting

and trying things out

and joy

 

 

for us, the workshop is

doing a poem

 

 

 

 

 

 

this poeming isn’t a performance

 

we might bring in in rolls of paper

or fabric, seeds, pondwater

or a miniature weighing machine

to ‘weigh’ words

 

 

 

 

but we don’t need to say that

to the participants

do we?

 

and we don’t need to say it to each other again

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

well it’s about

real attention

which is

a poem

in full presence

in the moment

that’s what it is

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

you know

we have never done a workshop twice

we’ve realised we can’t

 

 

 

 

oh yes, the risk has to be there!

 

 

 

your risk taking as a pair

actually made me feel safe

I allowed my senses to heighten

I wanted to pay attention

to the altered elements in the room

to the readings

the words

the other participants

trust and vulnerability

seem to be a central part of what you’re doing

 

 

 

care has been there

from the very inception of our collaboration

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

the phrase seemed

to sum up what we were doing

 

 

 

we want to stay with the trouble

and change everything carefully

 

 

 

not just what ecopoetry is being written

but what we’re doing with that ourselves

and because we involve participants

everything we do

has to involve caring

 

 

 

 

you know, long before ecopoet, I called myself

elemental

everything I’ve ever made

has got something to do with

the elements

people have found it a strange way to describe myself

but it makes sense to me

I’m elemental

I use it as a description of self

 

and I can only really think in metaphors

dance metaphor

physical metaphor

written metaphor

 

 

 

 

like tentacular feeling

object-body connectedness

five-sensical writing

poemish thinking

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

currently there is a propulsion

towards rapid change

like we’ve been talking about it for decades

and now suddenly we’ve got to do it all urgently

 

 

whereas we are doing change

but we’re doing it with care

 

 

 

 

perhaps we can say

collaboration and collective thinking

is in sharp relief

to the way we have become so fixated on the individual

and the rights and needs of the individual

often at the expense of the group

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

there are no introductions on our courses

we might have someone who’s

done a book tour

just published a book

or never written before

and nobody knows that

and so you’re completely freed from

the hierarchy and identity of a particular group

 

 

like those pyrosomes

that move and live as one creature

but are actually hundreds of individual zooids

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

we work hard at giving

each workshop a conceptual integrity

there’s a unified collectivity

of experiencing the same thing all together

a surrender of ownership

 

 

and we’ve come to realise

how much everyone is capable of by this method

 

 

 

well as a participant

I can understand that

I didn’t want to leave that creative space

it’s addictive being so cared for!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

but to care and hope

in the presence of our human-induced eco disaster

bring us to the real

essence of connectedness

 

 

 

 

we want to get into the minutiae

of what is actually here

 

 

partly because our work is seasonal

but also because we can’t repeat workshops

 

 

our eco library is now BIG

and then there’s the archive

 

 

 

 

 

we often arrive organically at a theme

and quite quickly

 

the minute we’re together ideas fly around

then somehow

there it is

 

 

then at the end I type it all up

and send it back to kin’d

because that’s how it seems to work best

 

 

 

 

 

 

I know now that I’m better in collaborative forms

I mean, I’m not bad on my own

but I am a responder

inspired by what’s immediately around me

— creativity is very instant for me

 

 

I totally appreciate that

she goes more underground and I’m a butterfly

 

 

oh the other day

we were asked to respond to what someone was reading

with wool

and can I say this?

(kin’d nods)

when I looked over

kin’d had made three neat little equidistant lines

and I had a tangled ball

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

we know we’ll want them to write

a little on their own early on

 to get them going

 

do a group thing

and there’s always collaboration

 

 

so for example we were looking at The Abyss

so we cut out giant footsteps

and placed them all round the room

so people had to step on huge dark footsteps

 

and although it doesn’t sound like much

standing on a black cut-out footprint

 

 

can be an experience of the abyss

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

as you might expect

 sometimes everyone does just end up laughing

 

 

 

in fact that’s probably why they’re laughing

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

there was an alchemical thing that happened

when everyone whispered their

kennings into the seaweed basket

like a shushing wave pulling body to body

 

 

everyone just kind of got it

and the wave happened

 

 

even though there’s nothing left to chance

in terms of timings

what may happen

within those timings

we can’t control

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

each one adds more to what we know

and it matters to us that we continue to grow

 

 

 

 

 

yes but

only in the same place

at the same time

 

 

 

our methods are similarly site-specific

and always include physical elements

as well as writing

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

like during a residency in Suffolk

where the ancient hedges were being restored

we climbed inside the hedge

and exchanged ‘letters’ to each other

a record of what we were encountering

 

we walked

 beside miles of hedge

 as an act of mourning

for the loss of so many hedgerows

 

 

 

 

or cutting up the writings

dropping them on the floor

 to be reassembled

following exactly this chance arrangement

 

 

 

 

 

 

not being precious about your work is crucial

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

we’re in these sites

deliberately writing about them

from the viewpoint of

the ecology of whatever is there

from the time

and the place

and the weather

 

 

 

 

 

 

this work hasn’t been personal because

it has all been outward facing

 

and in a collective writing

you often don’t get a linearity in the finished poem

it might be more listy

or fragmentary

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

we want to get into the minutiae

of what is here

 

 

 

 

I can’t not have some optimism

 

 

 

well, no, of course I don’t either!

 

 

 

 

 

having heart

rather than

having hope

 

 

 

I can imagine that you two would create

a working environment where people

would be able to feel that

—  a model

for engaging with the world that is heart-full

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

we’re situated in the grass!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

and kin’d always makes me go on

much longer than I can bear because

she has so much experience of durational work

like going on a darkness workshop for five days

 and you know, I’ve only just been born in these ways   so it’s all very challenging for me!

 

 

 

and for kin’d

things flow through her

which is why she seems able to keep on

whereas things stop in me

— I tend to go deep

downwards

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 I can see that you both really flourish

working in partnership

that it gives you energy

 

 

 

 

 

as a participant

in the workshops

it’s very clear that you’re one presentation

one lead

composed of very different functional parts

I felt the benefit of that productive tension

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 we might think about it in terms of perfectionism

and whatever the opposite of perfectionist is

reckless?

 

well whatever it is

 I’m not a perfectionist

which probably comes from being a dancer

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

with bonding over the Donna Haraway philosophy

and her thinking on kin

which gave us our name

 

and now

the participants at our workshop at Knepp last year

are going to carry on working together

they call themselves The Flock

we have travelled to the British Library

from our various rural homes

 

kin’d & kin’d have brought along some Think Things

 

they open a small brown bag

and tip out

an underwater sea creature \ a caterpillar \ a slinky

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I think they’re fresh ivy seed heads

from Hedera colchica probably

were they from a climber with huge floppy leaves

that look hand-painted?

 

 

 

the three of us have gathered

to talk about kin’d & kin’d’s collaborative practice

so in keeping with their core philosophy

of de-centering the human

the conversation presented here

will flow un-named

 

⏀

 

Our form is effortless.

U̶p̶s̶t̶r̶e̶a̶m̶ and downstream

c̶o̶n̶f̶l̶u̶e̶n̶c̶e̶

our procession starts with skill and effort

and steps right down to the sea

and the money f̶l̶o̶w̶s̶ back.

Don’t break this tangled nest.

Be part of the pattern

so y̶o̶u̶ will be free. 1

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

well we’re not always experiential

just most of the time!

re-imagining

how the world could be

seems so deeply important right now

so important that we don’t just re-use

the old methods of thinking

but allow ourselves to imagine a new way —

a new way of being in the world

 

 

 

well our collaborative practice

is made from

seasons

of workshops

and we make books from the collective writing

done on our courses

 

 

we didn’t set out to be radical but

once you’ve loosened a few things

 

and anything is possible!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 plankton

each workshop was about honouring

the source

of six raw materials used in the fabrics we wear

 

 

you may know that rubber

comes from trees

but did you know

polyester comes from plankton?

 

 

 

 

 

harmfully

inevitably

in looking back

to where raw materials come from

we got into many modes of extraction

and exploitation

 

 

 

U̶n̶silence her story

this harnessed history

she cried, redacted

her tongue, extracted

by rubber barons mine!-claiming 2

 

on our courses emotional discovery occurs

through communal

tactile experiences

 

 

 

as twelve participants were immersed

in a tightly held

dynamic experience

 

 

participants walked through that door and instantly

felt different

the whole room

had been dressed

and in ways we weren’t even fully aware of

until we came in on the second day

 

 

 

at one point we were led

one by one

up

to the lookout

down

to the cold depth of the sea

 

 

 

 

that moment also felt lonely

to be far away from the group

on the second day

we came back to the room

to find there was a wall of glass

with a full view of the beach and sea!

the theme was surfacing

and light poured in

startling and energising us

this time when you led us up to the lookout

it was via steps on the open outside of the tower

we could see for miles

see other people passing

both days we wrote collectively

and collaboratively

we shared our work in ways that

created new poems from our fragments

all of it was so cleverly orchestrated

and I learnt not only about how to run a meaningful workshop

but what it is to be held, educated and immersed

in thinking deeply about a subject

with others

through crafted words

 

there are many definitions of ecopoetry: for us,

it is a poetry that aspires to be conscious of what

we are doing when we describe, record, interact

with or take from what we call nature 3

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

we wrote a collective vertical threnody

one of your new poetic forms

and I understood then that

you’re thinking about the invention of form

new forms of poetry

new forms of thinking

new forms of being

 

 

 

 

 

 

write an elegy for the indigenous peoples of the

rubber forests. Lay a piece of tracing paper over it

on which is drawn a river with all its spreading

tributaries. At each joining of a stream to stream a

whirlpool is also drawn. Where the whirlpool is,

rub out the word beneath it, thus giving the

‘vanishing’ to the elegy 4

 

the idea of the vanishing elegy

was based on an energy

from the material we were working with

 

 

the poem lives there

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

like fabric-ation

where each fabric became a site-specificity

 

 

we were also wearing every type of fabric

for each class:

silk, rubber, cotton, eiderdown fluff on our heads

 

somehow

dressing up like that

I’ll do it with kin’d

whereas normally

I would want to look quite neat!

 

[kin’d & kin’d laugh often and freely. it’s the kind of collapsible

laughter that makes the conversation fall off itself temporarily. the

kind that requires a big gulp of air and a long sigh afterwards

before they can pick up the thread again. playfulness underpins all

their serious work because it is the kinetic glue that binds these

two minds and bodies into one Think Thing]

 

in our first course we didn’t use or make any

specific forms

it was all WILD on the page

in a literal sense

 

in response to place

 

 

 

 

we were looking at borders

we are looking at borders

at loosening boundaries

 

 

you see at Knepp

it’s the humans that are constrained

that have to stick to the paths

 

 

 

the thin green thistle

puts its head in the cow’s mouth

and waits 6

 

 

 

 

 

we didn’t choose kin’d & kin’d

because it was non-gendered

it arose from our reading

of Staying with the Trouble by Donna Haraway

 

 

 

 

kin’d & kin’d is about describing connections

with other beings

in an attitude of kindness

 

 

and a lot of the work we look at is

feminist and ecopoetic

 

 

plug of sun

earth synapse

book of bark

canopy of

           over-water

           under-light

scientist-child

           of the long

           laboratory

scent of

           caramel

           copper

           petrichor

ridged as

           the bottom of

           a boat tossed

           on air

shadow I lean on

oxygen backpack

carbon moves

           between us

a looping breath 6

 

so kin’d & kin’d

its apostrophes

its double meaning

and no capital letters

is all about connections?

 

 

 

we don’t think of ourselves as avant-garde

so even if what we’re doing may be perceived as radical

that’s not our main intention

 

All done in a day and making room

for another thousand breaths 8

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

it’s ego-less as far as possible

 

 

 

you propose this way of working together

a with

as if your work thinks itself

 

this way the heart is inverted. This way is

good. This way the verb enters quickly

through the fresh crack, as thin as you

can imagine, but open nevertheless.

Once arrived, loneliness retreats. And best

of all - a sentence 9

 

 

 

 

 

we can never anticipate where the work will take us

we both enjoy all the experimentation

working in collaboration brings such pleasure

because we can be a bit mad

and we love reading the poems created

out of our workshops

 

  moth lecken

soundedness

  whisper tongue

 

  duggen

drenched again

 

laggs-lappen

spillwayed 10

 

you encourage each other

and others

to push at boundaries

 

 

 

I pushed up through russet earth,

back to light and life.

It is a spellborn thing,

this world. 11

 

 

 

 

 

 

and I’m pretty loose!

I come from an art form that is totally

collaborative

I’m a dancer

and a choreographer

and I like risking everything

 

 

 

 

 

 

together though we often use

the somewhat impenetrable Arcadia Project

then there’s Black Nature which is crucial

 

 

 

 

kin’d has a fantastic collection

of what you might call nature poetry

that we can use

 

 

not just John Clare

 

 

 

and we probably push a bit further creatively

when we’re together

because kin’d’s more hesitant

so I’ll be like

we could just jump off there and pull on that plant

and ask them to sing

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I’ve done so many different art-forms

play IS me

and I do love having the plan there

I appreciate her constraints

 

 

 

 

 

it’s the first time I found myself not knowing

what was mine and what was somebody else’s

I’d been pretty much in my bunker previous to that

I really felt the benefit and joy of that experience

 

 

can anyone really be playful on their own?

 

Open your ears

and brush up your eyes.

Search for the ciphers

that haze out the clears.

Plush will be the barks

that fret out to reach you

And wondrous be-crifting

is the vetiver prize. 12

 

we extend that play to the workshops

to encourage participants to let go and merge

use verbs instead of nouns

to invent words

 

 

 

run words together

ignore the rules of grammar, syntax, punctuation

experiment with form

 

 

 

and they do!

 

find a loose line of skin puncture

squish and land spurt and lunge

limp outer cover tearing magentering looseness

slip stick

how sumptuous an inner world that moist the

dry 13

 

 

 

we do so much planning

 

 

 

but it doesn’t come to fruition until

we actually go in and work with the participants

 

 

what excites us are pluriversal ways of investigating

through embodiment

movement

enactment

touch

and ‘making poemish’

 

although there’s a performative element

 

 

 

 

it not a workshop either

so calling it

doing a poem

seems okay

 

 

 

no!

 

no never!

 

[laughter folds up our conversation again. grabs all its corners at once and wraps away the self-consciousness of being so sincere, of caring. laughter as healing-cupboard. laughter as washamewoman. laughter as her-her.]

 

so you’re poeming…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

when I was in your workshop

poeming felt unique

like walking onto the page as a group

a showing not a telling of making

it is radically different to be led in that way

 

Our mouths were full of it

with its trill of birds.

Outpouring cascades of sonic urgency,

gulping dreams before they vanished.

This was just the beginning. 14

 

 

 

 

that makes sense of something I remember

which was feeling your genuine excitement and thrill

and the sense

of slight uncertainty that underpinned it all

 

what I experienced

was permission to also be vulnerable

to risk things

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

maybe it’s to do with our core idea

of Changing Everything Carefully

 

 

when we were thinking

about what to call our first ONCA season

and we saw that line

changing everything carefully

from ee cummings’ poem Spring is like a perhaps hand

we both knew straight away

that that was it

 

 

added to Donna Haraway’s idea

of staying with the trouble

 

 

 

we are trying to define

what ecopoetry is or could be

 

 

 

 

 

 

I suppose at the back of our minds was

we’re going to be doing something risky here

so we’d better do it carefully

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

so we were asking

how do we change things?

there’s the radical protest, yes

but what about other methods?

 

 

 

 

 

Moss leans south to catch

the last breath of summer,

tree shadows dance at wall’s edge.

I stand among them,

a piece of darkstar

making spells

from scatterings at my feet. 15

 

 

 

 

which has a violence in it

as disturbing as the crisis itself

 

 

yet your work is urgent

and engages with the urgency of change needed

perhaps it models a different way of thinking

about the changes upon us

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

it is our deliberate intention to

privilege the non-human

the non-individual

 

We huddled - the child and the puppy on my lap -

beneath the generous scrawny elder.

The bug-eyed stickleback strumpet.

Just a few small incisors. 16

 

when you said earlier that you were able to trust us

and take risks within our risk taking

I think that’s very much because

none of you are there as your identified selves

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

yes I felt that and in that space

we were able to think as a single unit

 

 

 

 

[laughter of shared flight of fancy. of getting carried away. of merging]

 

but seriously

being in your workshops

does feel like a special kind of unity

and being carried along

by the current of your thinking

 

 

 

 

 

our participants as a waterfall

released!

 

 

even very self-identified poets

are able to feel at home

once they can trust the process

 

 

 

 

what if all our creative interactions were like that?

 

Touching those leaves. Strange stronger as it is.

How come they made us leave. We put our

heads together, they wove our souls together,

though we didn’t know to notice…yet. 17

 

we aim to let things unfold

and we don’t know

where they’re going to end

 

 

 

 

we’re hoping

participants might be able to feel there is

potential for wonder

even within this crisis

 

 

so even when we go back to a location repeatedly

the themes will be different

 

 

we’re always expanding our learning

which is terribly important to us

 

 

so working together

and we have masses of books out on the table

we talk

we read to each other

we read poems outloud

 

 

then we unpack the why

 

 

 

and we’re both writing things down

adding this and taking away that

 

 

 

 

[collapsible laughter. the kind that makes the conversation fall off

itself momentarily. a memory of the seizing delight of surprises.

how their differences spark inventiveness]

 

we do naturally play to our strengths

 

 

 

 

 

and I can get all neat

sweep it all up!

 

 

like I’m vertical and she’s horizontal

I only really like neat lines!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

well, there we were! that’s us!

 

[a woolly ball of laughter tugging at itself]

 

once we’ve gathered our ideas

into our theme

then we start working on

the kinds of exercises we can ask participants to do

 

 

 

to work in pairs or small groups

 

 

with something five-sensical early on

to loosen things up

 

 

 

 

I think they had words on them as well

 

 

when it’s accompanied

by listening to a poem being read

 

 

your footsteps blacken and blot

the darkness like paper. fungus

gills quiver like the inside

of an umbrella. you step

into the abyss 18

 

 

 

but their physical body

has nevertheless done something

unexpected

 

action really does change everything

 

waterlogged in jeopardy

the minnows party 19

 

yes, in the workshop I attended

I remember that physical embodiment

as one of the things

that was very powerful —

all our senses were being used

or one was being taken away

and the unexpected arises

 

 

 

 

which we didn’t choreograph

it just happened organically in the moment

 

 

you can’t practice for that

you can only invite

 

 

 

 

 

 

the seed of a word, given the right conditions

can grow into a fabric that clothes us in truth 20

 

there is a very serious eco-aspect to our work

so while we laugh a lot

and bring fun to the creation and delivery

we do these courses

for a specific reason

and for a specific place

 

 

 

our skin creased like old maps to an oasis we could never reach on our own 21

 

and do you ever write just the two of you?

 

 

 

our own composite writing

has only developed since working together

on our ecopoetry courses

 

 

 

and then whatever is written in that outpouring

becomes the material for the poem

 

we have developed

experimental ways

of bringing our co-sited work together

into one voice

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

the hedge-writings

were then subjected to further

entanglement, taking lines

randomly and mixing them up

 

 

 

 

we were looking at our finished hedge poem

and can’t now work out

who’s

written

what

it really had become one voice

 

 

       wisp(whisper)fountain

scaled-turleface edge-out forms

       heart-fern symmetries

                  tree’s lip 22

 

we’ve been writing at Rye Harbour most recently

and our first piece of composite collaborative work

was published in Coast to Coast to Coast

and the Kennings for 16 Hedges

which came out of the Suffolk residency

was published in the Magma Collaborations issue

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

perhaps the composite poems

can be described as ‘exposures’

to and of a particular place

at a particular time

surfacing more distinctly

through two perception-bodies

 

 

it doesn’t include the lyric I

 

 

 

 

and whether people can enjoy that kind of work

is a question we don’t know the answer to yet

 

drawn-out sighs

no time for breath in

cluck throat hatched

(can air be thrown?)

 

making water path

gather-noises   bird-tribes

shallow waders

tuft duck black

stay small

 

(who companions

who wriggles by

who crosses species)

 

heron stands

wing dips the shallows 23

 

one thing that defines our work is that we try

to come at the difficult eco-issues

including the apocalyptic

at a slant

 

 

we were very clear about that from the beginning

and our work with Joanna Macy led us to include hope

and optimism

in our workshops

 

 wouldn’t have thought of including that myself

I wouldn't have thought of including that myself

because I don’t feel that hopeful to be honest

 

Donna Haraway has quite a nice take on hope

she thinks hope

is too much about future thinking

so she likes to use the word

heart

 

 

 

 

and that suits me

it’s about the present

 

 

 

 

 

 

Look up as the ash key unwinds,

sky trajectory,

birthing, here, now. 24

 

[we’re distracted by the Think Thing and play with it as if it’s a

caterpillar exploring the table while our thinking thinks]

 

like this object

you’re asking us

are there other ways of situating ourselves…

 

 

not for the first time in this conversation

I look in wonder at these two sparkling women

sharing their thought-provoking practice with me

and recognise a wild freedom

the feminine kind of freedom

a daring boldness of mind

that Mary Ruefle writes about like this

 

…there are no longer any persons on earth who

can stop you from being yourself, you have put

your parents in the earth, you have buried the

past… you are free…you would never want to be

a girl again for any reason at all, you have

discovered that being invisible is the biggest

secret on earth, the most wondrous gift anyone

could ever have given you.

 

kin’d asked me

on the way here today

to think about what risks I’m taking —

but I only do risk!

I mean, what risks am I not taking?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[confessional laughter. remembering the hedge laughter. joy of the

other’s risk laughter]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Put on your blindfold

Listen

Write

Wander until you are lost

 

Vertiging and muschweaving as soillingo

 

Multum in parvo

In-forming-our-selves-in -Nature

Little pieces of everydayness

What looks like maxon

Is treacle mata

Mata matters

Rhythmic mascherations

Fungal filiments forming

Fermenting recomposition,

Mycorrhizal manuka. 26

 

 

 

 

yes and I probably couldn’t have said that until

a few years ago

because there’s always been the singular artist thing

but actually I don’t have it anymore

and I’m so glad it’s gone

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

fragile refeelings damped together 27

 

we don’t often disagree creatively

but we do sometimes come up against something

we can’t quite help the other to understand

but in the crucial areas there is

a miraculous kind of harmony

 

 

 

accidentalist?

 

 

 

we tether each other to something expansive

 

  fastening drip-plash

 

                crowd-borne

 

        channel’d

                 funnel-

        runned

 

        sluice

     hatched 28

 

I’m so glad you two found each other!

 

I received your invitation

To tend my moss with kindness.

I’ve named my moss Cat’s Paw;

As it puts me in mind of playing -

My finger between the paw’s pads,

The claws just touching. Scary.

 

There’s a place by the water tub

Damp, alive with hollows.

Perfect. Perhaps.

But what about the other displaced mosses?

Can I tend them too? With more or less kindness?

I do, what I can do and tend with care.

 

Now take me out of the picture,

Am I needed, if needs be?

Or does the moss have a will of its own

With more hidden strengths than we know?

And the moss would not have been

Displaced by me in the first place. 29

 

it was the eco thing

that really brought our collaboration into being

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

oh legacy builders - look at you two!

 

the cafe is closing

we divide up the Think Thing

teasing it apart