Karen Salyer McElmurray | November 2020

Volume 53 Number 1, September 2020

Topic: “Despite the #MeToo movement, public acceptance of misogynist behavior and reluctance to believe women’s testimony exists. This political reality exists alongside our persistent violation of the Earth and global-warming induced catastrophe. Five celebrated women poets discuss the intrinsic connections of gender, class, race, and environmental activism.”

I. Educational Setting:

What is the appropriate educational setting or settings for this article or interview and corresponding teaching guide? Undergraduate workshop, graduate workshop, introductory workshop, advanced workshop, university program, community-based class?

As “Catastrophe & Survival” reports, via the UN’s World Meteorological Organization, we have perhaps a decade to avert global-warming catastrophe. Such scientific understanding makes this interview necessary reading—for graduate and undergraduate populations, for university and community-based programs alike. As the interview also points out, we are one of 8,700,000 species functioning on the planet. One of the purposes of this interview is a discussion of the stark juxtapositions of economic privilege and the perpetration of violence, not only on bodies, but as assault on our planet. Ecopoetry works to reconnect human and non-human, humans and other species, people and the rich diversity of the natural world. And it works to reconnect us via one of our most available means—language. The interview provids a strong foundation for potential courses, be they literature, creative writing, environmental studies, women’s studies, or an excellent fusion of all of these.

Is it appropriate for use in multiple educational settings?

The interview could provide a strong foundation for any number of courses. The number of texts taught in such courses may vary, of course, as would the level of discussion and the goals and desired outcomes of such courses, but “Catastrophe and Survival” would indeed provide a solid foundation for a course in a variety of settings. As Brenda Hillman asks in her poem, “Slightly Less Stressful Walk Up Hill,” “How do you hope to survive?” This is a question we all need to ask, and broad educational experience and creative work is one vital place to begin.

Is it appropriate for a single genre or multi-genre class or workshop?

The most obvious place to use this interview as a cornerstone would be a course in Ecopoetry. But a wide range of workshops choosing the natural world as a basis for textual discussion could begin with this interview as a starting point—be they poetry, fiction, or nonfiction.

II. Lesson Objectives

What is the objective for having students engage with this article or interview?

First and foremost, with some one million plant and animal species on the verge of extinction, the immediate objective would be to raise an awareness of what Allison Adelle Hedge Coke calls ecological violence toward Earth, an assault on the planet. But such an awareness would only be one springboard in the course. Intersections with ecological violence in the interview are numerous in terms of other narratives involving women, women of color, under-represented economic populations—in short, any humans subject to silencing, violence, disappearance. Indeed, as Brenda Hillman says, consciousness itself is an “activity” of being human, and writing that has depth, breadth and vision is an important goal of any workshop. The interview is a doorway to writing and to discussing writing that reaches beyond the page, to a kind of resurrection of human experience, which is the goal of art itself.

What do you want them to learn from it?

In the closing lines of Camille Dungy’s poem, “Trophic Cascade” (part of the interview), the speaker reminds us that we are all “born from one hungry animal, this whole, this new landscape.” The underlying urgency of “Catastrophe and Survival” is that, indeed, we are all born from the same source, the same planet. We are part and parcel of the body that is snowshoe hare, weasel, vole, coyote, wolf, bear, fawn, vulture. We are one species among millions. The words we write are part of a whole as well. That is one step toward a humble understanding of making art itself.

What discussions do you hope this article or interview will generate?

Writing courses are an active engagement with the craft “tools” of poetry and prose. Writing is also an understanding of meaning. In botany, “heartwood” is the central wood of trees—layers of living sapwood cells periodically converted to heartwood. Such heartwood is functionally a “dead” wood at the center of a tree, but it is also the central supporting pillar, strong as steel. Writers, be they beginning or advanced, must manipulate the elements of craft; they must also work to awaken the central part of their words. The interview with these five ecopoets can simultaneously remind of us the “heartwood” at the center of environmental chaos, and of the job of writers to awaken that center, whatever their subject.

III. Contextual Introduction or Lead-In

Consider the context in which this article or interview might be introduced: in a literature discussion, a creative writing discussion, or both.

The interview would be offered on the first or second day of a course, in the context of a discussion of language as art and the question of why we “make art.” As the interview reminds us, “Even if there is destruction and grief, there is also much beauty and wild creation in the human and non-human realms. [We can] have confidence in the powers of language to resist hopelessness…” Why do we make art in our individual lives? Do we make art to contribute to our survival as a species amongst species? Do we make art to understand suffering, either individually or as a planet? To discover/rediscover joy? Any art must necessarily be a discussion of both creating work, being willing to let some of it go as it evolves, and revisioning it—much we are now tasked with revisioning our wounded Earth.

Does the article topic fit within a current lesson plan or recurring discussion?

The interview would be a springboard for discussion at the opening of a course, and it would be revisited throughout that course with an emphasis on deepening a discussion of its varied and many questions—be they about the natural world and its connection to our bodies, about the need for solitude in a chaotic world, or concerning our human connection to one another via gender, race, or as human and non-human beings. The interview could provide both a course opening, a kind of framework, and a periodic basis for generating discussion as the class and its participants evolve in their work.

Does it address an ongoing question or craft concern raised by students in their creative work?

While the interview is a deeply a moral imperative for a troubled planet, it also provides us with tools for how meaning can be represented via aesthetics. For example, Sandra Meeks describes the powerful process of naming as an influence on her work—winnow ants, eyes of Galapagos’ marine iguanas, Caribbean reef squids. Via naming, as she says, she “gives voice and image not only to what is in danger of being forever stilled, but also to the marvel of survival.” Camille Dungy speaks of the strength of the process of shifting to the right margin as she wrote “Trophic Cascade,” thus seeing the poem differently and notating on the page “the ways that a new life, or a newly protected life,” might change everything. As she says, the incorporation of “disruption and renewal… via lineation, pagination, rhythm, image, capitalization” speak to the representation of her experiences as a Black woman in the DNA of the poem. Craft/aesthetic concerns become questions of the living world. Form equals meaning. These are the ongoing questions of craft and purpose in the writing workshop.

This essay can be introduced while reading creative nonfiction; it can also be introduced in a broader discussion of “fact” and “truth” in creative writing. It would be helpful in a multi-genre class transitioning from poetry or fiction to creative nonfiction: it can be used to discuss the similarities between the genres and the application of previously learned concepts and methods to creative nonfiction.

IV. BROADER DISCUSSION POINTS AND QUESTIONS FOR STUDENT

What main points from the article do you want to draw students’ particular attention to?

New scientific understanding shows an increasingly short window for ameliorating the environmental impact of global warming. Immediate cultural issues involving women, race, class are intrinsically tied to historical, economic and environmental issues. The term Ecopoetry helps make space for an environmentally-charged poetic that meditates on the human and greater-than-human in equal measure.

To separate the human and the beyond-human natural world, to see them as a priori adversaries, has dire consequences. The work of these five women writers—Sandra Meek, Allison Adelle Hedge Coke, Camille T. Dungy, Brenda Hillman, and Aimee Nezhukumatathil—demonstrates how art can balance aesthetic and activist concerns, navigating personal and global crises without abandoning wonder for word and world.

Examples beyond the article?

Among many works of poetry, fiction and creative nonfiction, a few to consider from this author’s library:

Cerulean Blues: A Personal Search for a Vanishing Songbird; Vulture: The Private Life of an Unloved Bird (Katie Fallon)

The Ecopoetry Anthology (edited by Ann Fisher-Wirth and Laura-Gray Street)

American Purgatory (Rebecca Gayle Howell)

A Mercy; The Source of Self-Regard (Toni Morrison)

Ceremony (Leslie Marmon Silko)

A Literary Field Guide to Southern Appalachia (edited by Rose McLarney, Laura-Gray Street and L.L. Gaddy)

The Hour of the Land; Finding Beauty in a Broken World; Erosion: Essays of Undoing; Red (Terry Tempest Williams)

Any related craft terminology from essay or article to define and discuss?

Activist practices and writing; writing and bodies, the body, embodiment; illustrated creative works; form and content; lineation; pagination; rhythm; image; capitalization; naming; invocation and evocation.

Does the article connect to any current publishing trends or issues?

“Catastrophe & Survival” could not be more necessary.

As described earlier, the interview begins by describing the 2018–2019 World Meteorological Organization’s report that “perhaps a decade remains to avert global-warming-induced catastrophe.” It goes further to address crucial intersections:

…despite the #MeToo movement, discourse surrounding the Brett Cavanaugh Supreme Court confirmation hearings and regarding female public figures, such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and teenaged-climate activist Greta Thunberg, reveal that acceptance of misogynist behavior and reluctance to believe women’s testimony persists.

V. CONSIDERATIONS FOR STUDENTS’ INDIVIDUAL WORK)

Is the article topic relevant to each students’ current work-in-progress?

Students taking a course with this interview and related materials as its backbone should be aware that discussions of that material will co-exist with a disciplined and substantive writing life for the duration of any term of study. But a body of material devoted to environment awareness and ecological and cultural violence does not in any way set aside the purpose of any course devoted to art making.

Will the article challenge each student to think about their work-in-progress in a different way?

Art, and the word-art that is the writing life, has as its primary goal re-visioning. Seeing. Looking. Remembering. Naming. As Toni Morrison said, “There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal.”

Did the article generate any new ideas? New directions? Help identify specific area to revise?

Whether students are activists who have come to the classroom to study writing, or writers who will glimpse activism for some weeks, the course will contribute to the larger goals of art making: connection.

VI. POTENTIAL ACTIVITY (TO BE COMPLETED INDIVIDUALLY OR IN SMALL GROUPS WITH SHARING AND DISCUSSION)

In class writing exercises, prompts, or group activities related to topic.

Numerous writing prompts exist inside the interview. Students could begin by responding (via their own poems, fiction or nonfiction) to this phrase: “in this moment of silencing, violence, and disappearance.” Students write, either in-class or as a take-home exercise, and bring what they have written back to class as fodder for discussion. Other prompts of interest inside the interview:

Violence is violence is violence

To separate the human and natural world has dire consequences for both

All this life is born from one hungry animal.

What were you, but burning?

The prompts are numerous, but the objective is to draw students out—to facilitate their discussion of their own lives and experiences with the issues of the planet, women, men, race, and class that the interview raises. Students are encouraged to begin poems, scenes—to imagine places, times, characters—to create images and exact moments.

Out of class reading assignments, writing exercises, prompts, or group activities related to topic.

One large, potential project previously attempted by this author in a workshop was to have students take on a short-term volunteer project. Suggested (and undertaken) projects include volunteering at a homeless shelter; working at a food bank; volunteering at a foster home; trail crew working in a state park; working with Meals on Wheels; holding premature babies at a local hospital. Students then write about their work. They take notes each work session. They develop those notes into stories, a series of poems, essays.

The primary obstacle to this project so far has been reluctance. Some students have found themselves reluctant to track down a venue for their work. Some have found the project distracting from their “real” lives as students, teaching associates, and their lives in terms of jobs, home lives. Once the project was targeted and time to devote to the project was clearly established, in many cases, objection turned to involvement.

The opportunities are many, and the time spent finding a project has proven well worth the work devoted to that project.

VII. CONCLUSION

“This poem [Burn, a book-length poem on environmental and gender-based violence] is a testimony of truth in the horror of a beautiful and sacred thing, fire. It represents what we are in while in this world, this state, and under assault and arson. It calls for balance and reckoning, reveal, and for healing.” (Hedge Coke)

“…enough of us know how to claim our space. We also know how to make space for others—human and beyond human—to exist in safety and security.” (Dungy)

“I have a lot of confidence in the powers of language to resist hopelessness.” (Hillman)

“In confronting the violation of home, whether that be the body, family, culture, or our shared natural world, Still (my newest work), I hope, gives voices and image not only to what is in danger of being forever stilled, but also to the marvel of survival.” (Meek)

“I must work harder than ever before to model kindness and respect for other living things on this planet. And to keep tenderness and empathy as something to aspire to, something to work towards every day until it becomes… a natural practice.” (Nezhukumatahil)

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Karen Salyer McElmurray's memoir, Surrendered Child: A Birth Mother’s Journey, was an AWP Award Winner for Creative Nonfiction. Her novels are The Motel of the Stars, Editor’s Pick by Oxford American, and Strange Birds in the Tree of Heaven, winner of the Chaffin Award. She has coedited, with poet Adrian Blevins, an essay collection called Walk till the Dogs Get Mean. Wanting Radiance, her newest novel, was released in April 2020 from University Press of Kentucky. An essay collection, Voice Lessons, is currently under contract with Iris Press.