[00:00:06] Nickole: But I wanted to talk to animals.
I wanted to be able to have that, that superpower. That was the one power I wanted when I was a kid.
[00:00:17] Jose: You know, one time I told my mom, can you tell me a poem about your childhood? And she said, I've been waiting for you to ask me that my whole life.
[00:00:26] Camille: Part of my hope always for what poetry can do is brighten our attention and make us pay more careful, open wise attention to the world.
[00:00:38] Tamara: Welcome to the Terrain.org podcast Conversations with authors, artists, scientists and others who share Terrain.org's passion for place and focus on climate, community and justice.
I'm the magazine's podcast editor, Tamara Dean.
You just heard from Nickole Brown, Jose Hernandez Diaz, and Camille Dungy, three of the poets whose work is featured in a new anthology from Story Press, the Gift of Animals.
On this episode, I speak with Nickole, Jose, Camille, and Allison Hawthorne Deming, who edited the Gift of Animals.
First, I want to tell you a little bit about my guests.
Alison Hawthorne Deming's sixth poetry collection, Blue Flax and Yellow Mustard Flower, was published by Red hen Press in 2025.
She's also the author of five nonfiction books, and with Lauret E. Savoy, she co edited the anthology the Colors of Culture, Identity, and the Natural World.
Deming is a Regents Professor Emerita at the University of Arizona.
Nickole Brown is the author of Sister, first, published in 2007 and reissued in 2018.
Her second book, Fanny Says, won the Weatherford Award for Appalachian Poetry in 2015.
She teaches at the Sewanee School of Letter's MFA program and lives in Asheville, North Carolina.
Jose Hernandez Diaz is a 2017 National Endowment for the Arts Poetry Fellowship. He's the author of the Fire Eater, Bad Mexican, Bad American, The Parachutist, and Portrait of the Artist as a Brown Man.
He teaches workshops for Hugo House, Lighthouse Writers Workshops, the Writers center, and elsewhere.
Camille Dungy's poetry and prose considers history, landscape, culture, family, and desire.
Her latest book is Soil: The Story of a Black Mother's Garden.
Dungy is the author of four collections of poetry, most recently Trophic Cascade, winner of the Colorado Book Award.
She also edited the groundbreaking anthology, Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry.
I began our conversation by asking editor Alison Hawthorne Deming why an anthology such as the Gift of Animals is necessary now.
[00:03:08] Alison: Well, of course, the fate of animals is a matter of great concern for everyone who loves the natural world and loves the wealth of meaning, connection, companionship that animals have brought to us. And we know that we're at the sixth extinction crisis. And that the difference between this one and the ones that came before is that we are here as human beings with a moral conscience and a love for the animal.
And so we just felt it was a very good time to think about the many ways poets had celebrated, grieved over, and even included in their spiritual lives poems about their connection to animals.
[00:03:58] Tamara: Did you have some of the poems in mind? I know not all of the authors represented in the anthology are still alive. And so I wonder if you had a cache of poems that you thought really had to be in there and how many of the poems you solicited or got organically without even asking.
[00:04:16] Alison: There are some poems and some poets that I knew had to be in the anthology.
I knew Nickole's work, and of course, I knew Camille's work, and of course they had to be in the anthology.
And other poets whose work I was quite familiar with. Jane Hirschfeld, Wendell Berry, Joy Harjo, of course.
But I really wanted new poets. And Jose came to me as somebody whose work I did not know. And when I began to read it and found his poem Tecolote, I thought, ah, this is a gem, and it belongs in this book.
So I could not have done this anthology without the University of Arizona Poetry Center. They have probably the best collection of poetry anywhere in the world. And I spent many, many hours going through books, finding new poets, exploring the work of poets already loved and wanted to have in the book.
So it was a very organic process, very intense. Six months of hunting and then looking at what would work together to give a very broad sense of human animal connections in our time.
[00:05:30] Tamara: It sounds like a very enriching and fulfilling process.
[00:05:35] Alison: Putting an anthology together is a little bit like putting together a collection of poems. You have to trust your intuition. You have to look for an arc. What is the arc of experience that we would like readers to have?
So you end up with a stack of poems like this, and then you get down to the stack of poems that becomes the book, and it's thrilling, exciting, terrifying, and very, very gratifying. Very gratifying to see how many poets and poems I found that spoke to human connections with animals. It made me feel so much better about human beings.
[00:06:15] Tamara: Well, that's so interesting, I should say, for listeners. You were pantomiming a stack of about 6 to 8 inches of poems to start with, down to a stack of maybe an inch.
So that's a lot of winnowing. And since you mentioned the way of organizing it, I'm curious to know about your Categories, and also these echoes you presented at the beginning of each category. Tell me more about that and the decision behind it.
[00:06:41] Alison: The book is in seven sections, and each represents a quality of experience that I thought was very important.
The first is Praise, then Lament, Companionship, Fear and Vulnerability, the Least Among Us, the Sacred and the Future of Animals.
I didn't want an anthology that was all poems of praise and joy, because anyone who's paying attention to the animal world is feeling sadness and grief. Certainly they may be feeling fear, they may be feeling vulnerability, they may be feeling in empathy, the vulnerability of many animals.
And so those categories, I thought, would help to bring a wide range of emotional and psychological and even spiritual qualities to the anthology.
And the breadth, I felt was really important to make the point that our connections are profound with the animal world, even though for most of us, we live in cities and we don't have a lot of daily contact with animals.
The idea of the echoes is really an extension of this idea of breadth, and it was this for a very, very long time. As far back as you want to go, in most traditions, you can find that one of the ways people have found to speak of how important animals are to them is through poetry. It's in every tradition, it's in every spiritual literature, it's in the oral traditions. And I wanted to have those as kind of grace notes for each section to indicate that one who wished to do further hunting could find a great deal that spoke to our care of animals and perhaps that would help us do better in the future.
[00:08:42] Tamara: Were there any of those echoes or older traditions writing about animals that surprised you, that felt, I don't know, contemporary in some surprising way, or offered a new dimension to what you already understood about animals and humans.
[00:08:58] Alison: I was kind of blown away to find in the ancient Mesopotamian culture, in a Duenna, that possibly the first poet speaking about the deities of that time.
Many of the strengths of those deities, Inanna in particular, the great feminine deity, were qualities that came from the animals. They used animal metaphors to represent the power in its beauty and also in its fearfulness, to hold its place of power over others.
Of course, very easy to find in all the indigenous traditions of North America and beyond, because we know that's very much a part of the indigenous world is the sense of kinship with all beings, and the animals being part of not only daily life, but of spiritual life and of ritualistic life. So there are quite a few that come out of indigenous cultures.
But also, I should mention that there is a poem that represents through animals the grief of the Aztec culture as they suffer the effects of the conquest.
So there's this sense that animals can represent not only our spiritual connection, but they can speak for the griefs that might be suffered at an entirely cultural level, not just personal or familial grief.
[00:10:35] Tamara: That's a great observation. I did notice in the poems, not just in the echoes from the anthology, but the individual poems, how they so often reflected what was emotionally ineffable about our own experience.
But to raise that to a whole cultural level is very interesting.
[00:10:55] Alison: That's something that always interests me, and it has interested me as a professor, particularly in nonfiction as well as poetry.
We have personal stories that are very important to us in telling.
But I've always said that it's also extremely important to think about how your personal story is a cultural story, because we are cultural beings, and we understand that there are pathological aspects of human culture.
And so if we think about ways to enrich ourselves through culture, not with material wealth, but with meaning, music, song, a spirit of connection, that's a good thing.
[00:11:40] Tamara: Another aspect about anthologies in general, and this one in particular, that makes me curious is how the poems are speaking to each other and how that might change either the meaning or significance, depth of. Of each individual poem. Can you speak to that a little bit?
[00:11:59] Alison: Oh, sure. That was a really fun. Part of editing is looking at the flow from one poem to another. There's one little sequence that I love to mention, because Jose's poem is in the sequence. It's in the section Companionship. So of course, you think of cats and dogs. The first poem is a poem about cats from Jane Hirschfeld. The second poem is a poem about dogs from Linda Pastan. So these are what we think of when we think about companions, the dog and cat that live with us. And then comes Jose's wonderful tecolote. And his relationship with the owl is a beautiful relationship that comes through language, through the imagination. And it's something that ramifies through different periods of his life and takes on different resonances in different periods of his life. And I loved that sequence, and I loved kind of shaking up. Let's think about other animals that have been our imaginary or imaginative companions, how important they are to us. And so that was a sequence that I was very mindful of.
[00:13:09] Tamara: Well, while we're on that, I'll invite Jose to talk about the placement of his poem in that sequence. Were you aware of that, Jose, or did it strike you when you saw it in the collection?
[00:13:21] Jose: Yeah, it did. Come off as striking in the sense of the juxtaposition of domesticated animals and sort of the mythological charm of the Tecolote in terms of, like, indigenous Aztec cultures. And also, I think mine has, like, a contemporary spin on it where I mentioned how the tecolote was something I was referred to as as a teenager because I would stay up late at night watching Letterman. So it kind of takes on, like, a contemporary Letterman and Conan o'. Brien. So, like, mixing in the ancient and also the contemporary as well.
[00:13:59] Tamara: You're listening to the terrain.org podcast. I'm host and producer Tamara Dean.
On this episode, I'm speaking with contributors to the poetry anthology the Gift of Animals, including the editor Alison Hawthorne Deming, and poets Nickole Brown, Jose Hernandez Diaz, and Camille Dungy.
[00:14:22] Tamara: Alison, this is so weighty physically as well as symbolically or significantly.
It's beautiful. It has four color illustrations throughout and thick pages. It feels very rich and satisfying to hold.
How did that decision come about? It must have been a big undertaking to produce this kind of book. It's not your usual poetry anthology.
[00:14:50] Alison: Well, I have to just give tremendous gratitude to Storey Press for that. I had no idea how beautiful the book would be as a physical object. We did discuss artwork, and I had the opportunity to look at samples from several artists. And the artwork is by Daniela Gallego, originally from Colombia. I honestly did not know that they would put so many beautiful, beautiful images in the book. And when anyone picks it up, that's the first thing they say. Say, I don't even care about the poems. Look how beautiful this artwork is. I was overjoyed to see how much the press put into making this truly a gift. And we wanted this book to be thought of as, you know, not only thinking that the animals are gifts in our lives, but this is a gift book you can give to because it brings them a joy, I think, and something to really reflect into with the range of poems.
[00:15:42] Tamara: Now let's hear the poets read their work from the anthology. Nicole, why don't you go ahead and read, if you will.
[00:15:54] Nickole: Sure, sure.
Thank you, Tamara.
This is called A Prayer to Talk to Animals.
Lord, I ain't asking to be the Beastmaster gem ripped in a jungle loincloth or a Dr. Dolittle or even expensive vet down the street that stethoscoped redhead her diamond ring big as a Cracker Jack toy All I want is for you to help me flip off this light box and its scroll of dread to rip a tiny tear between this world and that A slit in the veil, Lord, one of Those old fashioned peeping keyholes through which I can press my dumb lips and speak, if you will, Lord, make me the teeth hot in the mouth of a raccoon scraping the junk I scraped from last night's plates.
Make me the blue eye of that young crow cocked to me. Too selfish to even look up from the flash of my damn phone.
Oh, forgive me, Lord. How human I've become.
Busy clicking what I like. Busy pushing my cuticles back and back to expose all ten pale, useless moons.
Would you let me tell your creatures how sorry I am?
Let them know exactly what we've done.
Am I not an animal, too?
If so, Lord, make me one again.
Give me back my dirty claws and blood warm horns braid back those long frayed endings of every nerve, tingling with all I thought I had to do today.
Fork my tongue. Lord, there is a sorrow on the air I taste but cannot name.
I want to open my mouth and know the exact flavor of what's to come.
I want to open my mouth and sound a language that calls all language home.
[00:18:07] Tamara: Thank you, beautiful.
And as you read, I was reminded of the audacity and a bit of humor in the beginning of the poem. And I wondered how you imagine that either complements or complicates the idea of the sacred. And how do you mix those so effectively?
[00:18:34] Nickole: You know, I think one thing that's so striking about the way that Alison and the press put together this anthology is all of those illustrations. Because when you see them, at least in my imagination, it takes me to bedtime reading, you know, children's books. We are so in love with animals when we are kids. And that anthology has that feel. And at some point we're taught to turn away from them and to say, you know, look towards the. The human world. And. And what's happening there in the first line is I'm remembering how absolutely obsessed I was with the Beastmaster when I was a kid.
It was one of my favorite things.
And thinking, you know, how. Of course, you know, all of that can be dismissed, you know, this terrible movie.
But I wanted to talk to animals.
I wanted to be able to. To have that. That superpower. That was the one power I wanted when I was a kid. And so when the poem opens, it's. It's a nod to that saying, yes, you know, that was silly making as a child, but it's also really important, you know, and to remember that those. Those primal instincts that we have when we're little children, maybe they shouldn't be scrubbed away.
[00:20:02] Tamara: Yeah, I love that and earlier I asked Alison about how the individual poems are changed somehow by being collected in this anthology. Do you feel that effect on your poem, Nickole?
[00:20:21] Nickole: Yes, I do. And I. I loved reading this from cover to cover. It's like a chorus rising up and each individual poem is saying how much we love the non human world and how we grieve for them and need them near us.
For me at least, to see my poem in such company made me feel much less alone.
That I wasn't the only one sort of calling out in the same way.
[00:20:47] Tamara: That's beautiful. Thank you.
Camille, would you read your poem from the anthology?
[00:20:53] Camille: Great. Thank you. I'm happy to be part of this conversation.
My name is Camille Dungy and I'll read a poem called Characteristics of Life.
It begins with an epigraph.
Characteristics of Life.
A fifth of animals without backbones could be at risk of extinction, say scientists.
BBC Nature News.
Ask me if I speak for the snail and I will tell you I speak for the snail.
I speak of underneathedness and the welcome of mosses, of life that springs up little lies that pull back and wait for a moment.
I speak for the damselfly, water skeet, mollusk, the caterpillar, the beetle, the spider, the ant.
I speak from the time before spinelessness was frowned upon.
Ask me if I speak for the moon jelly.
I will tell you one thing today and another tomorrow and I will be as consistent as anything alive on this earth.
I move as the currents move with the breezes.
What part of your nature drives you?
You in your cubicle ought to understand me.
I filter and filter and filter all day.
Ask me if I speak for the nautilus and I will be silent as the nautilus shell on a shelf.
I can be beautiful and useless. If that's all you know to ask of me, ask me what I know of longing and I will speak of distances between meadows of night blooming flowers. I will speak the impossible hope of the firefly.
You with the candle burning and only one chair at your table must understand such wordless desire.
To say it is mindless is missing the point.
[00:23:31] Tamara: Thank you, Camille.
There's so much yearning and pressure and passion behind this poem. And I wonder what it means to you to write something like this and to speak for the silent or the creatures that are taken for granted or unnoticed.
[00:23:47] Camille: So much of that poem was actually a response to rage and terror.
I feel helpless in the face of so much rage and terror. And so finding a way to spin.
Those emotions and those responses into something that could be seen differently felt. Like, an important thing to do. Also, when speaking in response or with recognition of creatures who often evoke only rage or terror from us, or frustration or dismissal.
So it felt really important to me to try and been that initial response into something more beautiful, more connected, more.
More worthy of praise.
[00:25:08] Tamara: It also feels as if it's directed toward a listener.
Did you have a listener in mind?
[00:25:13] Camille: I think all of us.
I don't know that I had a specific listener in mind. There is that moment at the end, you at your table with only one candle burning. And I think that that was quite honestly a moment where I channeled an energy that walks alongside the poet Lucille Clifton and a turn in her poem Mulberry Fields that I really love. Where she is thinking about.
She is talking to a you inside a poem who is vibrant and necessary.
And I think that was the similar kind of you that I was thinking towards.
[00:26:05] Tamara: Yes. And your poem also seems as if it's making a demand.
And so I wonder what you imagine or hope. If anything, the response to that poem would be.
[00:26:38] Camille: Well, some of the creatures I describe in that poem are not necessarily creatures that we think of in a space of praise. The beetle, the spider, the anti. The fact of the erasure of so many invertebrates in this contemporary epic that I just. The response I wanted to have was a slowing down and a different kind of attention and a space for a awareness of the intrinsic connection between these invertebrates and this human culture that would call a spineless thing wrong or something to be frowned upon. Right. Which was, as I was writing this poem, was actually part of the parlance to sort of say that to be spineless is a bad thing as opposed to be able to move flexibly in a different way through the world.
So if any response I desire is just a turning of an attention or a changing of how we place relevancy and importance and care.
[00:27:34] Tamara: And your poem is in the section the Least Among Us.
I wonder what you think about it, being surrounded by the poems that it is, and about it being in this anthology.
[00:27:45] Camille: I love and have long loved so many of the poems that are in this anthology.
The Rita Dove poem that is in my section. Like, I just. I adore that poem. I just think it's just so wise and smart. And then there are poems that I didn't know that were new to me. And that too Being part of my, Part of my hope always for what poetry can do is brighten our attention and make us pay more careful, open, wise attention to the world.
That my poem is in, a section that's really, really asking that of readers, just makes me happy that I'm part of an army who's doing this work in this particular way.
[00:28:40] Tamara: Yeah. Is there anything else you'd like listeners to know about your poem or being in the anthology, Camille?
[00:28:46] Camille: One of the things that art and poetry can do that's so necessary in our world, and maybe particularly in this moment, is this kind of two pronged approach of creating beauty. Just making something that is joyful, inducing because it is so beautiful.
And often as response to things that must be felt deeply. And sometimes that deep feeling is rage or pain or intense grief.
And so that epigraph in the beginning of this poem, of my poem, with this just horrific statistic is inextricable from the praise song that is part and parcel of the poem that I just feel like I am so grateful to poetry to give me a place to hold both my joy and my grief.
[00:29:52] Tamara: That's wonderfully said. Thank you so much, Camille.
[00:29:55] Camille: Thank you.
[00:29:57] Tamara: And Jose, I'd love for you to read your poem and then we'll talk a little bit more about it.
[00:30:02] Jose: Yeah, my pleasure. This is Tecolote.
The Mexican word for owl is tecolote, from the Nahuatl, Tecolatl. I think it sounds beautiful in both languages. Both of my origins. My favorite bird is the tecolote, the way it sits in the tree. Wise insomniac, alone, only company is rain. At night it comes alive. A little moon, a myth, a continent of leaves. At midnight, the tecolote transforms into a jaguar, into a python, into a dragon.
When I was younger, my mom used to tell me I was like a tecolote because I would stay up late to watch Letterman or Conan o'. Brien.
Then as a teenager, I was a tecolote because I would go out late with friends and party.
Now at 35, I'm getting a tattoo of a tecolote on my forearm. Reminder of my childhood, my ancestry, the night. Gracias. Tecolote, protector of the moon and sky.
[00:31:09] Tamara: Thank you.
I'd like to hear more about the evolution of the tecolote as a companion animal for you or something you feel affinity with. Can you tell me more about that?
[00:31:18] Jose: Yeah. I have several poems in my books relating to tattoos that I wish I would have gotten. And one of them is a tecolote that I always wanted to get on my forearm.
[00:31:23] Tamara: But you don't have one?
[00:31:57] Jose: I don't have any. And I have probably like five poems about tattoos that I. That I kind of daydream about. But I just never kind of raise up religious, told not to get tattoos type of thing anyways, so I've always. I've always had poems about tecolotes, jaguars, and, you know, Cortez and. And the Aztec royalty as well, like, sword fighting and. And battling out. So I've always wanted to get, like, cultural tattoos. Instead of getting it, I wrote poems about them.
[00:32:03] Tamara: So is the tecolote unique, or do you have other animals you feel affinity for? You mentioned a jaguar.
[00:32:33] Jose: Yeah, they tend to be, like, referencing indigenous southern Mexico jaguar.
And also, like, my parents grew up in ranchos, so a lot of, like, I have poems about roosters, poems about the ranch life that I would visit as a youth. So kind of that rural lifestyle of the ranchero lifestyle that my parents grew up in, my grandparents grew up in before moving to the pueblos. So for me, the animals are also like, cultural references. And.
And even in Southern California, like, I'll incorporate seagulls into my poetry, coyotes. So regional symbolism as well.
[00:32:53] Tamara: It sounds like you're not writing about domestic animals, but animals that represent your culture more, and those are the ones you're noticing or that affect you more. Can you tell me more about that?
[00:33:02] Jose: Yeah, I've tried writing a poem about my actual dog that is domesticated. I didn't really like it, so I think it's kind of like the mythology of the animal and. And the cultural references. You know, when my. My grandmother was around, she would say, esta scudo como la boca de unlopo. She would always say that when it starts to get dark, it's dark like a wolf's mouth. So I think a lot of the storytelling that I grew up around involved a lot of animals and going out in the fields and, you know, machetes. And it sounded to me just like a little more intense and. And interesting than the suburban life I grew up in, I think. You know, one time I told my mom, can you tell me a poem about your childhood? And she said, I've been waiting for you to ask me that my whole life. And she started telling me a poem about, you know, helping work the fields when she was a child with her brother. And then I pretty much was just jotting it down, her story and ended up getting it published in the Georgia Review. And it's in one of my books as well. So for me, a lot of times, it's not just my stories, but the stories passed down from my parents. Who immigrated from Mexico. So I'm a first generation Mexican American and also my grandparents stories as well, who have since passed on.
[00:34:22] Tamara: I love that you have this well of material going back generations. It's wonderful.
And I'll ask you the same question I asked Nickole and Camille.
How does your poem change, if at all, by being part of the section companionship that it is part of or being part of this anthology, The Gift of Animals.
[00:34:42] Jose: I think like I was mentioning earlier, some of the animals in Companionship were more domesticated animals. I just think that that's a little bit the difference is that it's more interested in the companionship with like mythological cultural references. And also the fact that tecolote was the indigenous word which I have trouble pronouncing. The tecolote. Like the Spanish word is actually buho. So that's what I liked about it was that my mom would refer to it in the indigenous way. And I don't think she knew that it was like an indigenous word because I would ask her about it and she would. Was not familiar with the distinction of the Spanish and the indigenous or the Aztec or the Nahuatl. So that was just curious to me and like kind of what has been lost as well because of the conquest. And so I just think that there's like layers to it which I think can be illuminated alongside the other poems in the companionship section.
[00:35:42] Tamara: That's fascinating. Thank you so much, Jose. And I want to open this up because I imagine that some of you have questions for each other.
Does anyone want to ask a question of someone else?
[00:35:57] Camille: I am always curious how people feel about particular poems of theirs being selected for an anthology like this that I love so many of the poems in this book. And I guess how do the rest of you feel about this kind of idea of being in concert in one, you know, with so many other people who are doing this raising up of the taco, the animals.
[00:36:35] Tamara: Nickole, do you want to take that first?
[00:36:37] Nickole: This is such a good question.
I mean, I think I mentioned this earlier.
I feel like I've been invited to the best possible party I can possibly get into.
And. And I feel this way a lot of times when I. When I walk to a bookshelf and I'm like, oh, my friends, you know, the. The people that hold you up, that remind you not only to pay attention, but sometimes they even remind you who you are when you have forgotten, you know. And Allison, your. Your anthology, it's. It is a gift.
It's a reminder that perhaps the things That I care about, that other people do too, which is tremendous.
[00:37:20] Tamara: Jose, do you want to respond to Camille's question?
[00:37:22] Jose: Yeah. I think it's just refreshing to see work and attention to the animal life and kingdom. And I think we can get caught up in poetry with awards and fame and Instagram, and so it's refreshing, noble, beautiful, and. And I think that necessary as well. And so when my work is in. Included in anthologies like this, I think that it's a little bit different and unique, as opposed to like a literary magazine publication where it's more about me and then the other writers and aesthetics and art and a lot. A lot of times, maybe more superficial things at times.
So thank you, Allison, for. For including me in this.
[00:38:07] Tamara: Thanks, Jose.
Camille, how would you answer your own question?
[00:38:11] Camille: I feel like sometimes writing can feel so lonely, so isolating the actual act of writing. I wrote that poem in the middle of the night. It was sort of one of these, I read that statistic, can't sleep now kind of poems. And that feels very much like, am I the only one who cares? Am I the only one responding to this? And so picking up a beautiful book like this and seeing this, what Nicole called this party, this collection of people who care deeply enough to make art in this call, feels really exciting. And as a professor, I just think of the generations of new minds who get to experience all of these poems together in one place. What an incredible opportunity to be able to just move from page to page and one splendor to the next as new audiences.
Anthologies are the best for that. Right. Because it really offers such a wide breadth of voices for readers.
[00:39:34] Tamara: Lovely.
Anyone else have a question for your co anthology writers?
[00:39:38] Nickole: Actually, Alison, I have a question for you.
So spending all this time going through these poems, making the selections and whatnot, do you feel like it's informed either your work moving forward or has given you a sense of what makes a truly effective poem about the more than human world? Was there an undercurrent that. That you picked up on?
[00:40:11] Alison: Oh, what an interesting question.
I don't know if there's an undercurrent. I. I would say that first of all, I was impressed at how many poets there are who are deeply concerned in writing, at least spending some of their writing time writing about the animal world and our love and grief about what's happened. And also, you know, like, what Jose's talking about, the kind of cultural resonances that come to us through myth and story that might have drifted up through generations. I think that's a really really important thing.
I don't think there's an undercurrent so much as there is this sense of a. There is a community out there that is very scattered of people who have a sense of purpose in their writing. That has more to do with what is this moment in time in which we're living. And what can I say to help it be seen and felt in a way that it needs to be seen and felt so that we move forward connected with this sense of purpose and the meaning that can be found in knowing that we are embedded in this large interwoven web of life, that that's what we are. We are not just human beings embedded in history. We are animal beings embedded in this astonishing array of creatures on this planet. And I was just thrilled at how many poems we found and how difficult it was to actually cut down from the 6 inch stack to the 1 inch stack to get to this book. And that, yes, it was hard to let things go, but it also made me feel really encouragement and hope that so many people are coming to this. And I would say 10 or 20 years ago that would not have been the case. It would. You would see a far smaller number of poets addressing issues having to do with the environment, the natural world, climate change and the fate of animals. And now it's an urgency and it's felt. It's not on the periphery of our lives, it's at the center of our lives. And poets are just so good at, you know, the way Camille speaks about holding the complexity of our emotions.
We can't just be happy about animals, we can't just praise them because underlying the praise there is the grief and I guess the fear for what's happening to them. So I guess if there's an undercurrent, it's that we shouldn't be afraid of the grief we feel because it's a measure of our love for the animal world.
I'll tell you a quick story about the beginnings of this anthology. I imagined the seven sections and that range of qualities of experience right from the get go. And Hannah Fries at Story Press said, well, put up a proposal. We'd really like you to do this, but you need a proposal. So I sent in this proposal and Hannah loved it. But some of the people, perhaps with more of a marketing perspective, I think they were wrong, thought, well, we were kind of hoping more like a book just about companion animals. And I thought the subtext in that was let's make people feel good in thinking about animals. And I thought anyone who is Thinking about animals cannot just feel good.
Anyone who's thinking about it or feeling anything for animals has this range of complicated emotions. And if we can help those people feel seen and have emotional connection with others through poetry, that is a gift. And so there you have it, the Gift of Animals.
And of course, once we got through that portal, everyone was thrilled with the book at the press. And you can tell that from what they put into the production values and the. And the gorgeous artwork.
[00:44:04] Tamara: Yes, and I'm glad you prevailed on that, Alison.
It's much richer for that, certainly.
Jose, do you have any questions for your fellow writers here?
[00:44:15] Jose: No, I just. I just wanted to highlight that I like the idea of giving it as a gift.
So I think I have a lot of books to give out in the holiday season in terms of animals and my family. If you follow me on social media, I'm hosting my dog and cat, like 24 7. So I'm just grateful to be alongside these writers and in community in this anthology.
[00:44:43] Tamara: Well, thank you everyone for being with me today and being on the terrain.org podcast. I really appreciate your time and thoughts.
[00:44:52] Nickole: Thank you.
[00:44:53] Camille: Thanks for inviting us.
[00:44:53] Alison: Thanks so much.
[00:44:56] Tamara: Thank you for listening to the terrain.org podcast. I'm host and producer Tamara Dean. The music is Liftoff by Nature Connection.
You can find more authors reading their poems from the Gift of Animals and listen to previous podcast
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