Hi, I’m Hari, I read a poem and now I’m pretentious

Where the Eyes Go, the Car Goes: Part 5 – In which Hari talks about writing and that, and then reads some poems.

This month, I have been thinking a lot about nature poetry. But not in an ostentatious way. I’m not conceited :)

I can’t pretend to understand poetry very well. I did English Literature A-Level (I got a B), and when I was teaching in the English department at the university, I taught some seminars on it. I’m a big fan of Terrance Hayes. I don’t really get it all, though, it seems just like prose but shorter and with weirder ways of saying things. But, I will say this, it does something, doesn’t it? Poetry. It does something to your brain. Pokes a finger in and wiggles around inside it. For example, here is a nature poem by William Wordsworth:

The World Is Too Much With Us

The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;—
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not. Great God! I’d rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.

Lovely, very nice. No idea what’s going on, but gosh I’ve caught a vibe. I want to sit on the seashore and look at big Pirates of the Caribbean boats. I want to wear a regency era dress and put my hair in fancy styles. Why am I talking about this, reader? Well, because I have been thinking a lot about it, I already said that.

But, last month, I had the pleasure of taking part in Rumi-inspired poetry workshops with

Cristina Feraru

, a Canadian writer and facilitator who works to connect writers with the more-than-human world. I can’t recommend Cristina’s workshops enough, they are beautiful – you can find her on here at Becoming Dialogical, but I digress. In said workshops, we both wrote a load of poems – her’s were significantly better than mine - but what I found more rewarding than the writing itself was the way in which we wrote them. After the beginning of the class, Cristina would send me off into the garden so that I could reflect on what was in my surroundings and then respond to it. It was midnight where I was, because she was in Ontario, and I was in Wales, and it gave me the chance to view the night in a way I simply wouldn’t have otherwise. I looked at the streetlights reflecting the dew on the grass. I saw the way the trees in the wood behind were shaped like big, outstretched mouths. I felt my feet sink into the cold, mossy, soil. I have never had a reason to be in my back garden at that time of the night and, because of that creative endeavour, I connected with nature in a completely new way.

In another workshop I did this month, Zena Edwards was talking about her perspective on eco-poetry, and the way that it makes a difference to communities who otherwise struggle to connect with nature. This was the same workshop where I wrote the above poem (she is currently running a course on the overlap between comics and poetry). I think if you asked most of the lads I know to write a poem, they’d neg you out of embarrassment and then run away, but, you know, once they got over that, maybe they’d love it. I’m sure a lot of the young women and trans people around my area probably would. I think part of the beauty of facilitated writing is that someone is paid to listen to your words. I think that makes writing them quite meaningful, especially if you’re not like me and you don’t insist on being the centre of attention at all points of the day. Maybe if you are like me as well, I do quite like being paid. All this poetry is making me pontificate.

Am I saying we should all take up writing poetry? No. Maybe? No, probably not. Otherwise we’ll all be writing in ways I don’t understand and I’m overwhelmed enough at it is. I suppose what I am offering, in this very brief article, is the suggestion that you find a way to create in nature or encourage someone you know to create in nature. How does that change the way we look at it? How does that change what the more-than-human means to us?

I will leave you with another poem and a prompt: go outside and choose one place where the human and not-human come together. Write about it. Then put it below or in your blog and tag me so I can read it or listen to it (I am paid to be here, so hopefully it will have the same effect). Invite someone you love to write about it too. Maybe invite them to share it too, and encourage the cycle to continue.

Nature

As a fond mother, when the day is o'er,
  Leads by the hand her little child to bed,
Half willing, half reluctant to be led,
   And leave his broken playthings on the floor,
Still gazing at them through the open door,
   Nor wholly reassured and comforted
   By promises of others in their stead,
   Which, though more splendid, may not please him more;
So Nature deals with us, and takes away
   Our playthings one by one, and by the hand
   Leads us to rest so gently, that we go
Scarce knowing if we wish to go or stay,
   Being too full of sleep to understand
   How far the unknown transcends the what we know.

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In the coming weeks, Nature with Hari Berrow will be giving over some time to explore celebrity and branding theory as it relates to nature and the environment. We’ll be exploring the ongoing rebrand of bees, the nature of populism, and much more. I would love it if these discussions were not just fielded by me. We’ve already got some brilliant contributors lined up, but if you would like to contribute a piece to the discussion, or post something on your own blog as part of ‘Where the Eyes go, the Car Goes’, please get in touch.