In praise of pansies and flowery language (sometimes).
I haven’t done a blog hurrah yet, but: I’m currently in a period of supported writing after my second-attempt successful application to the Arts Council England Developing Your Creative Practice funding stream.
The funding means I can spend real time, rather than snatched pockets of time, focusing on: critical reading about queering ecopoetry; time writing and crafting new poems; developing existing poems with mentoring; send work out regularly to publications and competitions.
I’ll also be attending some poetry festivals to run events and going on a writing residential to really get to grips with my own work and craft. Having just finished my MSc Creative Writing for Therapeutic Purposes, this is a great moment to be able to develop work and develop more of a profile as a poet.
It’s been an interesting process getting started with this funded time, because I’ve been so used to the actual poetry writing part of ‘being a poet’ being additional to tutoring, facilitating and having a top-up job. It was only in week two or three that I felt able to settle down to have some playful, creative time without feeling like I should be doing something else…I guess it’s a time of emerging from seed into flower…
Over the last few weeks, I’ve begun exploring some critical writing I already had – and started searching around for more. I thought I’d post up every month or so, with what I’m reading and thinking, around queer ecology and ecopoetics. Hopefully some of these links and ideas will be useful to others thinking about ecology, ecopoetry, queer theory and the links between them.
I started with Alex Johnson’s great article on ‘How to Queer Ecology: One Goose at a Time’ (though was slightly disappointed that he never mentioned the vulgar Polari meaning for ‘goosing’ – look it up). It’s something of a manifesto, reframing ideas of ‘naturalness’, challenging the ‘ecological mandates’ so often cited by homophobes and bigots, and inviting the reader to consider ‘an infinite number of possible Natures’. The invitation towards a less ‘relentless and blinkered earnestness’ in nature writing was something I really connected with – and for me, a space for camp, humour and play (all of which are, of course, extremely serious).
Timothy Morton is a critic I’ve been meaning to delve into for a while – and in finally reading ‘Queer Ecology‘, I felt like I’d found a critical friend (who ‘gets it’). There was a lot to fire the imagination and writing here, but my favourite quote, debunking our notions of “Nature” or biology as pure or singular, was that:
“If anything, life is catastrophic, monstrous, nonholistic, and dislocated, not organic, coherent, or authoritative. Queering ecological criticism will involve engaging with these qualities.”
I also enjoyed his challenging of the idea of ‘authenticity’ in “Nature” in relation to literary theory and (in)authentic texts (relating, for me, to Kenneth Goldsmith’s ‘Uncreative Writing’) and how he made connections with queer theory. The challenging of the apparently very defined line between life and non-life also appealed to my thinking about ecology and technology (as well as my sci-fi sensibilities).
The other piece I read was ‘Fucking Pansies: Queer Poetics, Plant Reproduction, Plant Poetics, Queer Reproduction’. Drawing the connection between the homophobic slander of ‘pansies’ (from the French ‘pensee’, as they were thought to look like a person in thought), Caspar Heinemann goes on to explore the feminisation of flowers, linguistic decoration and the idea of ‘speaking through flowers’ and poetic language. There’s a brief mention here too about that line between living and non-living matter and organisms, which is something I’m going to explore in my reading and writing.
So far, I seem to have found quite a few male theorists – and would appreciate knowing about female, trans-, women of colour, dis/abled and d/Deaf writers considering queer ecology, queer poetics and queer ecopoetry…Do you know of any?
Poetry-wise, I’ve just started reading Isabel Galleymore’s ‘Significant Other’ – more on that once I’m further into it – and have got C A Conrad’s ‘Ecodeviance’ and D A Powell’s ‘Useless Landscape’ coming up. Craft-wise, I’ve also been reading around endings, which is something I’m working on improving in my poems.
In my own writing, so far (amongst other things) I’ve been exploring lichen, sequins and dialogues about ecocriticism with a bluebottle fly – and working up some poems for the Gingko Ecopoetry Prize.
I’ll endeavour to post up once a month about what I’m up to, if only to feel like I’m doing something useful, eh? Please do ask below if you’ve any questions about what I’m up to, or to chat about ecology, poetry and queering ecopoetry.