The Poetry of Nature

1 day ago
7 min read

Zaro Weil has published a variety of material, I had the opportunity to ask her about her most recent book of poetry I Hear the Trees and I found her answers revealing and fascinating, I hope you will too. I also hope that they'll inspire you to pick up her collection and discover the wonder of poetry and the natural world.

When did you know that poetry was the medium you wanted to write in. Did you experiment with other forms? I came to writing through performing. I was the director (and performer) of a children's dance-theatre company in America and when we needed lyrics to a song or text for a play, I simply wrote them. One day I thought it would be interesting to do a show about an idea I believed in as a child. I thought the sun rose the instant I opened my eyes in the morning. Then I wondered if my friends had had unusual ideas they believed when they were very young. They did! I gathered up these child-centered recollections and they were all so dreamlike and other-worldly that I called them personal myths.

As I thought about these myths, I figured the show needed to be a poem-play. . . because . . . I knew poetry was the most other-worldly language in the universe. And voila! That's how it happened. In fact, I used some of these poems about personal myths in my very first poetry collection in 1988 (Orchard Books), Mud, Moon and Me!

Poetry appears more restrictive in form than prose. How do you navigate that and manage to convey the story or message you want readers to share in? Yes, it may be more restrictive than prose, but poetry has a way of compressing and clarifying one's hazy thoughts through words that are often more pointed, sensual and precise. Poetry is by nature condensed, layered and atmospheric. And curiously, as such, paves the road for big impressions and big thinking.

Also, poetry looks and feels different from prose on the page. It uses lines and stanzas, rhythms, imagery, metaphors and symbols. Prose relies on expanded text, sentences, narrative and paragraphs. Then there are descriptions and characters.

However, for me as a poet, wanting to convey a poetic message, I need to search really hard for the exact word, in the exact context, to express the exact thing I want to say in the most clear, hard-hitting and stimulating way I possibly can. I try to do this by finding the movement and rhythms or rhymes, the emotional colours and overtones and the clear visual imagery to pack in all the artistic, emotional and intellectual punch I can to ensure the poem really flies. But the secret truth is, when I am writing, I never quite know at the beginning what it is I want to say. Because as I figure out my own ideas and wishes, dreams and fears, poem-writing becomes a journey of self-discovery. I only get to understand my thoughts and feelings at the very end of the poem. I am often surprised!

What I hope for is that this concentrated attention to detail enables the reader to gallop through my poem, hopefully finding their own meanings, experiencing their own emotions and finding a similar exciting punch. Aha! So that is what I think! OK! Let me share this idea with you as best I can. With the best and most powerful words I can muster!

And there you have it . . . the reason we writers do all this . . . a literal sharing of minds and hearts. Of course, one can discover and express these deep-down personal thoughts and feelings quite wonderfully in prose, but it might take a little longer and look and feel quite a bit different. The thing about poetry is that it is immediate for a reader. . . served up on a plate . . . words that can open your mind layer after layer . . . and can indeed. . . make a heart beat faster.

What challenges do you face in wanting to produce a book filled with only nature poems? This is curious because when I start a book, I am not necessarily thinking. . . NATURE. In fact, I am more likely to be thinking about and feeling love, connection and sharing. I think most writers are the same. Because all we really want to do is connect with people. Be friends with the universe, hopefully share a thought or two about how to both understand things and, if possible, make them better.

So, for me, writing about nature, about the universe, is the closest thing to LOVE I can imagine. Perhaps because Nature is the most giving and beautiful friend we have here on earth as well as being the wildest, most mysterious, not to mention the most powerful and exciting, at times, for sure, even the most cruel.

Once I start writing about a howling wolf cub, jealous flowers, enchanted raindrops or jumpy shadows or snakes or dogs or oceans, then I am off. There is no stopping me sharing all the mystery, danger, wildness, 'giving-ness' and love of nature.

How does it feel to see the illustrations by Junli Song – does her interpretation of the poems match any expectation you might have had or give you inspiration? Junli shines a magical light on my words. It is a privilege for me to work with her. She reads my words, grabs onto the thoughts, puts them through the prism of her own mind and re-interprets the poems with a feeling and meaning distinct from my own. She gives visual coloured shape to the poems in ways that are sometimes, in fact many times, new to me. And seeing her artistry on the page, allows me the freedom to understand my own work in a new way; an incredible gift for an author.

When you are writing are you thinking of yourself as a reader of poetry or a mixed audience of ages, reading experiences and reading expectations? Great question. Here is where the hidden hippie in me comes out. This may sound strange, but I really write to please myself. But who am I, exactly? Easy. I am everyone. Everything. I am not only one with children of all ages and adults, but I am one with every tree or cat or star or anything else between the pages.

And as for my readers’ age, or experience or expectation, I try to nudge only in the gentlest of ways towards particular vocabulary, nuance, subject matter. But the heart of the poem, the core of the idea is, I hope, always and with all my heart. . . universal.

Is there a place, or places, special for you, giving you inspiration for your poetry? I once tried an experiment. I decided to write a short poem—a haiku—every day for a year. I looked out the window next to my desk each morning. And even though I was looking at the same view, my goal was to find something different every day to inspire the words. I suppose what I am saying is that we can find inspiration wherever we are. We just have to look.

I find inspiration sometimes in the particular shape of a cloud, or in a seal sunning itself on a rock in the sea on the Isle of Skye, or in a book about all the insects there are in the world (10 quintillion!), or from the title of a wonderful book called Otherlands, or with a baby owl that weirdly wound up on my bathroom sink, or with my dog Clementine when she died, or with what looked like an eternity of starlings soaring through the sky one twilight, or from a far-away cherry-red moon I saw a long time ago when I was walking in the woods with my father or. . . or. . .

The truth is these random inspirations can stir our emotions so much that they readily transform into the magic that gets our imaginations firing. So much so, that we have to write down what we saw or heard or smelled or felt because it was so . . . well . . . exciting. That cloud has suddenly become a fighting tiger, the seal is dreaming of a fabulous four-course fish lunch, all the insects in the world are meeting to join a sky parade . . . that kind of thing!

Me as a writer, all I want to do is share these ideas, these thoughts and feelings with someone else. And for all this, what better words to do the trick than poetry ones?

What are some of your most treasured memories of being in nature? I think the wildness and beauty of the beach where I grew up in New Jersey in the United States. It was that always changing, fabulous beach scene that was the inspiration for my latest book, I Hear the Trees.

Are there any natural phenomena that you’d like to see and capture in a poem? Another nice question. Yes, certainly. Both remarkable and everyday things happen that are spectacular in their own way; from avalanches to tiny waves rolling onto the shore, from cloud rainbows and fire tornados to moon music and sky quakes. From a platypus, a kakapo or a sun bear to the genius of a blossom opening, an eagle sailing through the clouds, an ant carrying a marigold seed on its back and well . . . everything else you can think of, I guess. All of these . . . definitely poetry material!

Will future collections focus on nature, or do you have plans for other subjects? Well, I have two new collections ready and raring to go. They are both nature-driven, yet different from anything of mine that's been published. BUT I do have several other surprise manuscripts that are not poetry and not just about nature.

If you had to recommend poetry, other than your own, to a reader starting to explore the genre, what would you recommend? There are so many terrific big anthologies of poetry available now that I absolutely love. A good start would be with I am the Seed that Grew the Tree, or The Big Amazing Poetry Book, or Wonder.

And, as above but which of your own collections would you suggest? I suppose among the books I’ve written, the gentlest most emotionally inclusive introduction to the whole idea of poetry has to be Cherry Moon, little words big ideas, mindful of nature.