LISTENING TO NATURE’S HEARTBEAT
Nature in Words Fellow 2019 at Pierce Cedar Creek Institute in Hastings, MI
As I was writing this collection, I was incredibly uncomfortable. As a city girl, I was constantly surrounded by sounds I was used to — music in the streets, cars, police sirens, trains. However, the everyday experience of living in the woods challenged my ears to listen to new sounds, sounds of nature. From there, I talked to the community of scientists and used Google to identify different sounds I did not recognize. Then, I imagined the love stories and familial relationships of the animals. Other times, I captured community conversations in Hastings. I listened to a lot of music to mask the sound of deer flies on my walks, mostly Megan the Stallion and Quixote, but also to mask the loneliness. When I was not listening, I was reading. Mostly authors of color that wrote about nature such as Mai Doan’s Water, Tommy Pico’s Nature Poem, and Viviee Francis’s Forest Primeval. These poets spoke to the ways our identities influence our relationship with nature. This project allowed me to explore the speaker’s fears of solitude, nature, and writing about nature. It also pushed the boundary of poem topics I thought I was supposed to write as a racialized and gendered body in the U.S. Ultimately, this project pushed me to be uncomfortable. In this discomfort and change, I found a new perspective and voice. Found solitude and stories I didn’t know was in me. Nature proves to match this constant change and discomfort with the seasons, adaptation, and ruthless snapping turtles. This is what I found most fascinating about the day to day life that even in the small moments, the change is constant. Below are a select few poems that I wrote, read and recorded for everyone to hear.