Bio

Matt Guntrip

is a guitarist, songwriter and indie musician in the UK. He has published four albums, and two singles – Penthesilea and Democracy – via CD Baby, available on most channels. The craft of writing lyrics interests him. Through creative writing, he is working to improve and explore the human experience, nature, time, love, loss, rejection, hope and injustice, and thus write better songs.

Jean Atkin

Jean Atkin’s third full collection ‘High Nowhere’ was published by IDP in late 2023, and is her ninth poetry publication. Previous books include ‘How Time is in Fields’ (IDP), ‘The Bicycles of Ice and Salt’ (IDP) and ‘Fan-peckled’ (Fair Acre Press). Her poetry has won competitions, been commissioned, anthologised, and featured on BBC Radio 4. She has been BBC National Poetry Day Poet for Shropshire and Troubadour of the Hills for Ledbury Poetry Festival. She has worked as a poet in education and community since 2010.


http://www.jeanatkin.com @wordsparks on X jean.atkin on Instagram and Threads Jean Atkin on FB

The Interview

Q:1. How did you decide on the order of the poems in High Nowhere?

The order of the poems in High Nowhere fell gradually into place for me over the three years I’ve been writing this collection. I knew I wanted to write a book which expressed how I felt about living at this time, and through these years. I began with my deep concerns and grief over the loss of biodiversity that’s everywhere, the steady rollcall of extinctions. And these still sit at the start of the book, under the title ‘Brink’.
At the same time the idea for ‘High Nowhere’ itself appeared to me (while plodding up a big ascent in the Welsh borders!). I think of it as a placename which could be whatever place we are looking at with attention. So I started writing High Nowhere poems in a variety of different locations. They slowly assumed their own form, so they all begin – ‘In High Nowhere now’, are 6 lines long in paired couplets, and have sound patterning that links the final couplets together.
I also wanted to write about my perception of the climate crisis, and with this in mind, I also wrote a section called ‘Source’ about energy.
I became very interested in seeing Iceland, where the glaciers are melting. Iceland has a culture based on living with what much of the world would perceive as especially challenging conditions – even before the climate crisis. A volcanic island with ferocious weather conditions, it now suffers storms of even greater intensity, and even less predictability.
Then came the pandemic, which (with difficulty as a freelance poet and educator) I worked through, and wrote through. These are the poems in the section called ‘Spread’.
And between the long spring lockdown of 2021 and the covid spikes of winter 2021-22 – I got my chance and was lucky enough to visit Iceland, accompanied by an Icelandic geologist. This section formed the core of the book – and I called this part ‘High Nowhere’ – for if anywhere is High Nowhere, Iceland is.
The following section is called ‘Fable’, and is about the way we humans try to understand a changing world: these poems are imaginings, new myths, and dreams.
And finally, the poems in this book have to confront the anxieties of living ‘now’. But I am actually a hopeful person, and I wanted to reflect, at the end of the book, how full of wonder I find the world. So the final section is called ‘Path’.



Q:2. How important is poetic form to you in this book?


It’s fair to say that in this book I used poetic form in response to what each poem seemed to need. The exception, see above, is the group of High Nowhere poems, which are scattered throughout the book, and for which I consciously kept to a created form that I devised.
Most of the other poems are written in quite tight stanzas, with only a little full rhyme. There are a couple of prose poems. I like my poems to feel tight, rather than baggy; and I do firmly believe that less is more.


Q:3. What did the geologist provide for the section “High Nowhere”?


My geologist friend organised me into seeing so much! She drove us into the interior on the ash roads, and talked about the conditions there, the fierce rivers, the phenomenon of glacial outburst flooding. She took us to Landmannalaugar and walked us around the lava fields, the hot springs and the extraordinary Blahnúkúr, the Blue Mountain. She supervised the hiring of basic camper vans, and we set off to see glaciers, icebergs, museums and turf churches. She even organised my opportunity to ride an Icelandic horse across a glacial river.
I asked her streams of questions, about the geology, about the language, about the folklore, all of which she bore with patience and humour. She made an enormous difference.


Q:3.1. Intriguing. How did the folklore influence your writing on climate change?

Some of the Icelandic folklore has echoes of Scottish folklore – for example the selkie story. And some of it is more specifically Icelandic, I think, such as the story about the red-headed whale at the huge Glymur waterfalls. All these stories are very tightly tied to place, which always interests me, and they speak to an understanding of and familiarity with place and climate, that today’s more urban, more alienated populations often have much less access to. I felt these stories were important to explore in a book about place, climate, and awareness. I found myself reaching for story again in the section I called ‘Fable’, too. Story is how we understand the world, and perhaps ourselves.

Q:4. What was it about the Icelandic language that appealed to you?


It felt to me very much the language of moss and lava fields! A sinewy, vigorous, outdoor tongue – with placenames like Haifoss (which is the front cover photo) and volcanoes Hekla and Katla. I was intrigued by the connections of this old Norse language to the dialects of north-west England, where I grew up. Nei, for no, rendered nay in Cumbria. And Icelandic still makes use of what elsewhere in Scandinavia are now archaic symbols, thorn (hard ‘th’) and eth (soft ‘th’) – which I used in the short poem ‘Listening in Icelandic’ –


þ
thorn is sharper, distinct at its tip
holds a raindrop pricked onto each
sound that cannot be extended while
ð
eth whispers like its own ghost
trailing a cloud behind it as if you
brushed by softly through the reeds

Q:5. How did you choose the photographs, and where they should go?

I take photographs when I’m out walking, just with a phone, and I have very few technical skills. But when I ‘see’ an image, I want to catch it. When I began to piece the book together, I imagined it with photographs, in the ‘Rings of Saturn’ manner – so not as literal, illustrative photographs, but images that sit a little to one side, or that might suggest the deepening of a mood, or the passage of a different thought, or a moment. I also like finding text in photographs, and once or twice I felt they landed just right, like the photo at the start of SPREAD. Which I’m sure originally did not say what I read into it.

Looking through the book to answer this question I see that in every case, the poem came first although there is some cross-fertilisation when sometimes what was in the photo transferred to the poem (‘Blahnúkúr 2’). So choosing where to place the photos was sometimes straightforward, like deciding I wanted a photograph of an Icelandic horse to put near to ‘Icelandic’. But for example the photo of the stag beetle is not alongside ‘Cerf-volant, two-star municipal, heatwave’, because these marvellous insects are becoming rare, and so I placed it to introduce the section called BRINK. And I was amazed to find, after writing ‘Grandmothers’, that I had a photo I’d taken ten years ago of our younger son tossing a snowball into the air, and that it was just right.


The photo that introduces the final section PATH is of a bus stop sign near my house. It is very battered, and just says: ‘And Opposite’ – which I take to be exactly the alternate direction I wanted that section to go in.


Q:6. Why is the idea of “place” so important to you?


This is a hard question to answer. I do see that over the years my poetry has been very closely related to my sense of place. I think it’s because place is necessarily limited by the physical planet. And so place contains all time, from geological layers and ice ages to the layers of myriad cultures, stories and societies. And because of that, place is a link to other people, all those who went before us, and those who’ll come later. I am curious about place, and what it can tell me, and I like to walk or cycle, for preference, to have that close sense of the ground shifting and changing as I go. That element of change is very interesting too, as often in recent centuries, we can’t go back to the places we knew as children, and find them unchanged, as many generations would largely have been able to in earlier times. Change is very challenging, so it too is a subject for poetry. High Nowhere is also about how we cope with change, and how we experience and describe it.



Q:7. Once they have read High Nowhere, what do you want the reader to leave with?

I hope the journey through High Nowhere will leave its readers feeling that their fears for the planet, for ourselves and our children are shared. High Nowhere is in some respects the closest I’ve come to political poetry – I do believe there are real villains involved in climate denial and exploitation, and that for the sake of the planet and future generations they must be resisted. I also hope High Nowhere will encourage storytelling about our lives, our plight, our hopes and our futures. And not least, that great joy in the everyday is some of the time still possible, and in itself, is powerful and hopeful.

High Nowhere is available from Indigo Dreams Publishing or from Jean Atkin.

Jean Atkin
http://www.jeanatkin.com

Q:1. How did you decide on what poems to send?

Well, when Alan (The Broken Spine) approached me, I was on a 7 month-or-so long hiatus. Alan messaged me around the time I was looking at getting back into writing and performing etc, so I didn’t really have a poem to ‘pick’. Instead it motivated me to sit down and actually do some writing. I have a chapbook out, called Pools, with Written Off (formerly Bent Key) publishing and my work focuses on nature, occultism, folklore and esoteric knowledge, so for me writing a poem that hit the themes was natural, even if I am a bit rusty. The piece I’ve written was created for the purpose of The Whiskey Tree and I had the brief in mind the whole time. There was only ever one poem to pick from for me.

Q:2. What poetic form did it take, and why?

The same form most of my poems take. I tend to write narrative driven pieces, using lots of intense metaphors and symbolism. Although I dabble, rigid structure and forms aren’t my usual go to. My pieces are layered and I can assure you that every word, every line, every detail is selected for a reason, that is to tell the story that I envision. The symbology and metaphors leave it open to interpretation, so I have my own meaning, but I love seeing other people take their own meaning from my work and assign their own feelings and stories to it.

Q:3. How did you use the whiteness of the page in your poem?

I think the best answer to that is I don’t. Often, when I write, it’s just on my phone. Yeah, that sounds so superficial in this day and age and of course I have journals and notebooks as well, but sometimes the idea just hits and I’m often out and about. When I write, I am fully engrossed to the point of visualisation, the ‘whiteness of the paper’ doesn’t exist. I don’t see it as stream-of-conciousness by the way, because I’m fully aware of the narrative unfolding before me. To some extent it is stream-of-conciousness, the narrative may try to guide me in a certain direction, down a certain path so to speak, but the overall control remains with me. I seek counsel in the unfolding narrative but I can and will change the direction whole heartedly if I feel strongly about specific metaphors, story arcs and symbolism. The paper becomes an extension of the self, a map, guiding me. It’s just sometimes I want to take the scenic route.

Q:4. How did you decide on the title of your poem?

Bloody hell, that’s a good question. In this instance the title came to me after writing. Sometimes I pick the name and write, other times I have working titles, sometimes I leave them untitled. The title, in my opinion is very important, it’s the genesis of ideas for the reader. It’s the sown seed, the poem being the harvest. I finished this piece and the title presented itself to me. I don’t know how, or why or from which recesses of my mind, but it just came forth. It fit the narrative, it fit the themes of nature, vulnerability, folklore, and the theme of wandering. The title is an extension of the piece in the case, the title ‘I am the Lamb that Roams the Land’ is almost akin to an opening line really.

Q:5. Imagery, or narrative. Which was more important to you in writing the poem?

Both are equally as important. There is a delicate equilibrium between the two for me that just seems to work. Of course, imagery is important, if it was any less so I’d focus more of prose writing, not to say there is no imagery in that, on the contrary, but poetry needs imagery, its foundations are steeped in it. Narrative though, is extremely important to me, every piece I write is a story unto itself, some are so layered and rich there are multiple narratives fused together in myriad unfolding plot lines. It’s a strange dance, but it works for me, both need attention, nurturing, development.

Q:6. What do you think of where your poem is placed in the collection?

I’m neither here nor there on it. When I released my chapbook, every meticulous detail was carefully ironed out, including what I call the ‘tracklisting’ haha, however for an anthology, it is not for me to decide. You have to trust the editor to make the best call, you also have to understand this is as much the editors, and every other contributing writers, project as well. My piece was deemed good enough to go in the Anthology. I have faith in my work, you’ve got to, even if sometimes I do get a case of the Imposter syndrome! In doing so, I have faith in the editor, and I have faith in every other piece of writing in the collection. This isn’t an individualistic endeavour, it’s a piece of this great sprawling narrative some strangers (and some friends) got together to create. Isn’t that beautiful.

Q:7. Once they have read your poem, what do you hope the reader will leave with?

Their own meaning. It’s immensely important to me, and rewarding, to see people assign their own thoughts, feelings, memories, experiences, to a piece of writing I’ve created. It’s a connection to the reader. The reader is the final, and always the most important piece of the artwork. Through strong symbology and rich, layered metaphors we create a weaving work of art that transcends my own meaning. It’s fucking brilliant! Once the piece is out there, it’s no longer exclusively my work. I merely provide the tools to help the reader visualise their own stories, Of course I have my own personal interpretations, but hearing others interpret my work helps form a bond between myself anf the reader, which further strengthens the emotional connection they have with the piece.

Q:1. How did you decide on what poems to send?

I wrote ‘Allochory’ especially in response to Alan’s call for poems. Or rather, when that invitation came I found that a poem, which had been circling around in my thoughts, had found its purpose.
I live in the Highlands of Scotland above the Cromarty firth, at the foot of a mountain, and so the closeness; the beauty and the fierceness of climate and environment are part of everyday living for me. If the first rule of finding a subject in poetry is to look out your window, I’m off to a flying start. But more than that, this place also calls out a kind of gathering behaviour in me. I’m alert to the opportunities that might kiss themselves to me as poems, be it watching the way a blackbird fanflicks its tail when landing on the fence in front of my house; or spotting the still wet warm hollow left by a deer’s hoof in the woodlands beside us. All of this happens alongside my awareness of the news of the rest of the world; and knowing that it can be challenging for people, and all life, in the other places that share this planet.
Having become fascinated recently by the activity of trees in their persistence in sustainment, including innovating ways to spread their seeds, I felt that a poem, which spoke to that idea of nature both as a wilful force and a collaborative prophecy of possibility, refuting all that would deaden life (all that ruin and decay that we name as natural, so often aided by our own alien actions, but which is only part of nature’s cycle, which also includes resurgence and regeneration) would be good for this moment. I felt the poem brought a necessary story, that these wonder birds, the jays, making their need for seed food a gift, becoming a cooperation with oak trees; taking up and storing their acorns, then forgetting just enough of them, leaving them buried to grow into new woodlands. All the light in it.

Q:2. What poetic form did it take, and why?

For me, even before I start drafting a poem, the form it might take starts suggesting itself. This may change, and often does as I write. I write fast for the initial draft, and in the case of this poem the free verse format became evident as I spilled its words onto the page. The whole notion of allochory; a force of hopeful regeneration propelled by flight and then ‘grounding’, echoed in a narrative voice that transgresses linear time, required freedom. This was intensified as I edited that first scatter of the poem, which I did as I usually do, by reading the poem out to myself; listening for that all important quality in every poem – breath.

Q:3. How did you use the whiteness of the page in your poem?

The poem parries between a formal arrangement of three-line stanzas and darting lines where I hoped to intimate the to and fro movements of the jays who are the agents of allochory – seed scatter – flitting between the feet of the oaks (where the acorns they seek are found), and their hoarding sites. In inviting readers to follow these movements as they read I’d also imagined introducing some sensation of the poem’s voice, it’s ease with transgressing linear time, connoting a bridge of memories that we might recognise, but which also cannot be ours, because they are deeper in time than us. All of this suggested information – not written directly in the poem, at all – requires space and breath in order for it to emerge. Leaving that space on the page is all a poet can do, really, printing an impression of thoughts distilled into the words of each line

Q:4. How did you decide on the title of your poem?

I decided to call the poem ‘Allochory’ because it is a striking word. Being the scientific term for dispersal of seeds by animals or birds, it is derived from Greek and so also, I felt, offered that sense of an ‘outganger’ word, uncanny and perhaps mythological. In this respect, the action of assisting seed dispersal becomes something more; enters into the arena of metaphor. I felt this ‘outwith’ present paradigms quality enhanced the tone of the poem as a narrative of care, and as a prophecy of hope and possibility.

Q:5. Imagery, or narrative. Which was more important to you in writing the poem?

I think the composition of this poem is led by the alignment between these two elements. The part of the Highlands of Scotland where I live sits at the confluence of several important watery navigation routes, and this has supported the coming together of a rich linguistic legacy. This local languaging is rich in compound words and words that act as imagistic routeways across linguistic boundaries. This marries with a time-deep oral tradition of sharing news and information in stories. Still, today, you will hear people in coffee shops and on buses sharing the pleasure of furnishing time spent together with stories. It’s a kind of social grooming; sustaining the bonds of fortitude for life lived through northern winters. I think my poem is borne out of this Ross-shire voicing; referencing the innovation in both describing the material and the abstract, and in sharing a narrative that brings traditional framing to present-day concerns – how our ecologies are being threatened by our own seduction into economies of extractivism and exploitation; how this takes us from sustainment (leaving us with parched imaginations), and an idea of how we might refute this, choosing more collaborative, hopeful possibilities.

Q:6. What do you think of where your poem is placed in the collection?

It’s uncanny isn’t it how these individual poems, drafted in all the airts and pairts of this wide world have become such evident companions. That’s the gift of having an excellent editor! I really appreciate the rhythm of the collection travelling the intimated routeways from the sea to the inland fraying of watercourses, or their absence, over terrains that we imagine as loamful or desert. There is a journey here, and a kind of terrible hardness of beauty too – always in balance with the truth of what we are living today, queasy with the knowledge of our impact on all the life that we are given to share this above all natural world with. The pacing of the shorter incantations and observations alongside longer poems is so beautifully executed. I am particularly pleased that ‘Allochory’ is bookended by the brilliantly upending of the sustained yet succinctly executed metaphor of Paul Brookes’ ‘Sup a Well Earned’ – inviting us to drench ourselves in the groundtruth of our relationship with nature, and the warning in it – and Matthew M C Smith’s deeply relational narrative ache; an entreaty, pleading the healing of the ‘humming trails of the flower field’, ‘the unstoppering of water’. Each poem feel like an empathetic friend alongside my own poem’s intimations.

Q:7. Once they have read your poem what do you hope the reader will leave with?

While Allochory might evoke some stark thoughts concerning our surrender to recognising our own smallness, ultimately, in front of the innovative persistence of life apart from, indeed, in spite of the consequences of our human failings to recognise that we cannot tame nature, I hope that it also assembles its words into imagining ourselves collaborators for more possible futures; planting oaks like jays.

Bios and Links

Cait O’Neil McCullagh

A Highland-Irish archaeologist and anthropologist, and child of migrants (with a pen thirsty for words about place and people, and becoming into belonging), Cáit has been writing poetry, at home in Ross-shire, since December 2020. Since that time more than 70 of her poems have been published widely in print and online. She also writes essays and articles, and her work has been stowed into anthologies alongside pieces by A L Kennedy, Irvine Welsh, Kathleen Jamie, and others whose works have populated her own reading for more than a few years. Cáit enjoys being invited to perform her ework at festivals and other literary gatherings, both in-person and virtually. A Co-winner of Dreich Press’ ‘Classic Chapbook 2022’, In 2023, she received a Saboteur Award, and was longlisted for the Bridport Prize. Her first full-length poetry collection, invited by Drunk Muse Press, will be published in June 2024. She continues to outrun cancer, first diagnosed in the spring of 2022.

Q:1. How did you decide on what poems to send?

I have been fascinated by wildness and domesticity all my writing life. How we create a sense of wildness in relandscaping industrial areas, how we make it palatable, d8sconnected from the sense of danger.

Also, how we can challenge expectations by reversing the way we sense things. It was the one chosen by Alan, who honoured and humbled me by requesting I contribute.

Q:2. What poetic form did it take, and why?

Imagistic free verse. Intrigued by Matthew and The Black Bough who revived an emphasis on memorable images. Those that after hearing or reading surprise and delight us so much we take them home with us, ignited once more.

Q:3. How did you use the whiteness of the page in your poem?

To give the reader pause to give the reader space to breathe air into the words to let the poem breathe to punctuate the spoken word

Q:4. How did you decide on the title of your poem?

I used the first few words at the beginning so the title flows into the poem. I used the colloquial “sup a well earned” to give an air of relaxation, of restfulness, of pause, of end of the working dayness, hopefully dislocated by “a pint of soil”.

Q:5. Imagery, or narrative. Which was more important to you in writing the poem?

It is imagistic and instructional. It tells the reader what to do, but the instruction is nonsensical from a normative point of view. Soil should be a liquid. It reverses expectation. Hopefully, engages the imagination. If my own words do not continually surprise me, then they won’t the reader. It could be apocalyptic, the earth swallowing us, as we have swallowed it. It could be the death of us.

Q:6. What do you think of where your poem is placed in the collection?

Superbly placed between a walk in salt marshes and the dispersal of seeds. Between two broad landscapes of words used to expand our sensory range, our topographical sensual vocabulary.

Q:7. Once they have read your poem what do you hope the reader will leave with?

Hopefully, it will ignite the reader’s own creativity and enable them to sense the world differently, if only for the briefest of moments.

Bios and Links

Q:1. How did you decide on what poems to send?

When Alan asked for nature poems, I got the impression he wanted something rugged – but my existing nature poems were mostly lyrical. We’d just had a big storm (I live inland from the sea across grassy dunes, wind rages through the neighbouring pines ) so I started writing something new. Then I remembered a poem I’d written about the strange and wonderful, ever-changing but somehow still unchanging salt marsh, here where we both live, in Southport – it was longer than most publishers accept and I hadn’t really tried submitting it because of that – Alan confirmed that he was open to lyrical and I sent him ‘Larks Attending’ and a rather wistful tree poem by way of contrast, but also offered to write the storm. Happily, he plumped for the larks. I’m really pleased he chose it as it’s one of my favourite walks in nature and the larks are a seasonal joy.

Q:2. What poetic form did it take, and why?

‘Larks Attending ‘ is a re-creation of an experience in its own rhythm and nature. Its free form captures, I hope, the pace and motion I experienced on the particular salt marsh walk on the particular day that inspired me. I think anything more formal would have been too constrained, especially for the fizzing larks and the leaping loper.

Q:3. How did you use the whiteness of the page in your poem?

There was no conscious use of white (or, in the case of draft one, cream with blue lines contained in a notebook!) space with this poem, so perhaps see it as just words being my footsteps on a pre existing path.

Q:4. How did you decide on the title of your poem?

The title came immediately, summoned by the wonderful piece , ‘The Lark Ascending ‘ by Ralph Vaughan Williams, which evokes an individual lark’s ascent so sensuously. The breeding grounds on our salt marsh and the dunes behind the beaches shelter many larks whose combined ascent is more effusive than that of a lone nest’s guardian, but equally captivating.

Q:5. Imagery, or narrative. Which was more important to you in writing the poem?

A walk, related from start to finish, is inevitably strongly narrative, but imagery makes it the poem you now see. If I had to plump for one, I suppose it would have to be narrative because without the walk, there would be no poem.

Q:6. What do you think of where your poem is placed in the collection?

Neither ending nor beginning, that’s a good place to be. Yes, I like being among. And it feels as if my poem marks a shift in style or tone, a contrast with much of what has gone before.  It’s always good to be useful! To misquote William Morris: ‘Have nothing in your pamphlet that you do not know to be beautiful or believe to be useful.’

Q:7. Once they have read your poem, what do you hope the reader will leave with?

A smile.

Bios and Links

Mary Earnshaw

lives between England’s northwest coast and Lancashire’s mosslands. Her poetry, short fiction, and non-fiction have been published in a variety of print anthologies and journals. She’s been shortlisted for the Bridport Poetry Prize and the Julian Lennon Poetry Prize and is a featured author in Black Bough Poetry’s ‘Silver Branch’ series

https://www.blackboughpoetry.com/mary-earnshaw  With three other Merseyside poets, she co-authored Belisama, published by Dreich, which won a competition for a ‘new alliance’ of poets.

Since 1993 Mary’s accompanied many archaeological expeditions in Zambia, inspiring her crime fiction novel, A Wake of Vultures. published by Cosi & Veyn (imprint of a small academic press, she was then running). A fan of letterpress printing and typesetting, she’s produced two handcrafted pamphlets: a retelling of Hans Andersen’s Little Match Girl (sold out) and Three Winter Tales of Darkness and Light. Mary recently completed a book based around visiting monastic ruins, which she describes as ‘a guilt trip, not a guidebook.’

Q:1. How did you decide on what poems to send?

I was honoured when Alan invited me to join The Whiskey Tree project. He explained that The Broken Spine was working on a poetry anthology that would embody the untamed spirit and wildness of nature. A theme of genuine interest to me and one which I often explore in my work in a broader ecological context. Despite this sizable body of nature-themed work, I felt compelled to create from ground-zero – poems crafted specifically with the brief “untamed nature” in mind. More so given the further directive from Alan that he was seeking a longer, narrative-driven piece to complement the shorter poems in the book.

I then set out to draft two poems with the view that one would be selected for inclusion. I envisioned the ocean as one focus and the desert as the theme for the second piece.

Why these areas? These two themes instinctively speak not only of nature but also the vagaries of the human condition. For me, the ocean is associated with origins and a source of nourishment – be it ecologically or spiritually. As we know, there’s a vast canon of contemporary work inspired by its majesty.

Likewise, the desert evokes an exploration of survival and the barren landscapes of existence. Its vastness, devoid of human life, as well as its biblical intersections, renders the desert a place of deep spiritual reflection. I was at the time, also reimagining T.S Eliot’s The Wasteland, whilst engaging a voice that succumbs in chasing an idealist world as depicted through images of desolation and mirage. As such, the microcosm conferred by the desert also speaks directly to the metaphysical realm. A complex entanglement between the psyche and an “otherness” involving relentless erosion, breaking and sometimes reconciliation.

After a month of drafting and refining, I submitted what I considered to be two expansive pieces that not only paid tribute to nature’s ruggedness but also addressed a wider commitment to our relationship with Earth. Poems which would feel visionary in language and imagery, in the same way the wild scapes they depicted evoke something beyond this temporal realm.

Ultimately, I enjoyed creating with the special brief in mind. I’m honoured that “The Great Desertification” was subsequently selected for publication alongside such fine contributions by the other poets in The Whiskey Tree project. A beautiful anthology which I foresee will present nature in an original, moving and timeless light for years to come.

Q:2. What poetic form did it take, and why?

As mentioned in Q:1 above, Alan expressed his wish for a longer narrative type poem to complement the shorter poems in the book. So yes, it’s a narrative free-verse poem. The type I actually lean towards in my work – a prose poem of sorts. I find the unconstrained nature allows the voice of the poem to take centrestage.

In a way, I had already imagined this form as the best medium for conveying the visions I had in mind for the brief. Something lengthier and lyrical in the way the words converse – a musicality that speaks to the rhythms of the natural world on a grander scale. The equivalent of a “poetic opus” if you like, as opposed to an étude.

Q:3. How did you use the whiteness of the page in your poem?

For this particular brief, the priority was to establish a poetic voice that encompassed the wildness of nature, be it indirectly through a “speaker” or through use of vivid imagery and other literary devices.

Since this is a free-verse narrative poem, there is less emphasis on form (how the words and lines are spaced) and more focus on language. I retained a traditional five stanza structure which felt optimal in allowing the essence of the poem to flow with clarity. I believe the desired result was achieved by adopting this form.

There are instances where the whiteness of the page and unique spacing may enhance a particular poem – say for experimental visual poems where the spaces speak to what lies between the lines. Other times, keeping it simple and free of distractions works best. I felt that this was one of those occasions – i.e simplicity and clarity of flow over experimental form.

Q:4. How did you decide on the title of your poem?

Well, “The Great Desertification” explores desert scapes in parallel with human desolation, neglect, displacement, spirituality, as well as our fragile symbiosis with Earth.

I wanted a title that embodied all these aspects, in particular the sense of abandonment, mental erosion and internal struggle – both physically and metaphorically. In addition to the “self” I hoped to address the notion of a wider “collective grief”. Something vast and ubiquitous to mankind.

The first word that came to mind given the theme was “desertification”. It captured all the existential elements above. And as we know, the word itself most commonly refers to the physical process by which fertile land becomes desert due to drought or deforestation.

I felt that this ecological rupture extended seamlessly to that of individuals on a spiritual and metaphysical level. And that the rupture is a universal and often deeply philosophical experience. Hence “The Great Desertification”. The “desertification” I addressed in the poem, also leaves poetic imprints of who we are as a race.

So the title came quite readily. Even before drafting the first stanza, it was on my mind, eliciting the vision I had for the poem.

Q:5. Imagery, or narrative. Which was more important to you in writing the poem?

Whilst “The Great Desertification” is more of a narrative poem, I instinctively placed imagery at the centre of my creative process. Imagery is an important ingredient in creating an atmospheric piece regardless of the type of poem.

I write from a place of complex emotion and find imagery paramount in relaying the mood of a poem in an engaging way. I.e. suggest rather than define. Find inventive ways to convey a story by using defamiliarization etc. As a reader, I find it is these unique aesthetics which can intensify the poem’s impact.

This brings me to a longstanding conversation I’ve been having with fellow poets along the way. To me, in an “effective” narrative poem, there is always an overlap. Narrative and imagery are thus not mutually exclusive. Think of a Venn diagram. The intersection is where the ideal balance lies – to abandon one set for the other would simply not work. The poem has to feel evocative and also carry a strong voice.

This is my approach to poetry in general and even in prose. At least in the way of achieving the kind of piece I enjoy reading. Other people may prefer something more direct – but that is personal taste. Those familiar with my prose will know it leans towards poetic prose, examples of which can be found in my published stories.

Likewise, when crafting a narrative poem like “The Great Desertification”, one needs to leverage on both areas and use intuition as a guide. Each poem is different and will tell you what is needed as it unfolds.

Q:6. What do you think of where your poem is placed in the collection?

I think it is very thoughtfully placed. I like how the resurrected birch in Morag Anderson’s preceding poem “Your Mother Stands on the North-East Side of the House after Zaffar Kunial” subtly reflects the “gleaming resurrections” in “The Great Desertification”. Likewise, the “utterly unpeopled” fisherman’s path at the start of Mary Earnshaw’s “Larks Attending” feels like a continued journey of introspection out of “The Great Desertification” – with a certain spatial timelapse in between of course.

These are, of course, very subtle connections, which in a way mimic the interstices of nature and our ecosystems. On the other hand, each poem is also distinct. A self reflection of its own.

It is this intrinsic weft made up of individual fragments, which runs through the arc of the collection. No matter where you begin reading, it feels like a step into the wilderness. One which comes almost spontaneously yet feels seamlessly organic in the way the collection’s arc progresses and the way the poems interact. A beautifully curated anthology which personifies the spirit of nature and our ever changing place within it.

Q:7. Once they have read your poem, what do you hope the reader will leave with?

Interesting question. I think with art and poetry, many of us turn to it as catharsis and a form of reflection. I would like to think my poem fulfils these gaps in the reader’s life and also empowers them to connect with the given subject at a deeper level.

Now, with this specific poem in The Whiskey Tree, I’d of course, hope it transports them into the vivid scapes I envisioned. Makes them pause to assimilate the details and word choices – query what they mean in the context of nature and also the humanscape. Leave with a bit of that meditation embedded in their mind – namely the ruminative expanse of the desert and what it reveals of ourselves. Also, I’d hope it is a poem they would return to time and again. One that feels layered and that raises new questions.

I think read in its entirety, the collection feels transformative, and each of our poems is a deeply evocative experience in that transformation. One that brings a heightened awareness of nature’s forces and also our place in the greater scheme of existence.

On this final note, I’m thankful to our editor, Alan Parry, and all the contributors for making the project a special and memorable journey.

Bio and Links

Vikki C.

is a British-born ‘Best of The Net’ nominated author, poet and musician whose work explores the intersections of science, ecology, existentialism and the human condition.

She is the author of THE ART OF GLASS HOUSES (Alien Buddha Press, 2022) – a chapbook reimagining the liminal spaces of memory, heritage, and the metaphysical.

Her first full-length collection WHERE SANDS RUN FINEST (DarkWinter Press) has just been released in late January 2024.

Vikki’s poetry and prose appear or are forthcoming in EcoTheo Review, The Belfast Review, Ice Floe Press, Black Bough Poetry, Nightingale & Sparrow, Acropolis Journal, Boats Against The Current, DarkWinter Literary Magazine, Origami Poems, Jerry Jazz Musician, Mythic Picnic, Fevers Of The Mind Poetry & Art, Ellipsis Zine, Across The Margin, The Write-In (National Flash Fiction Day), Literary Revelations, Loft Books, Lazuli Literary Group, Salò Press, Igneus Press and other venues.

She was a finalist in the Jerry Jazz Musician 63rd Short Fiction Contest (August 2023).

Follow her on Twitter at @VWC_Writes