Events…

Currently I am at work discovering, documenting, altering and re-discovering text in a process that began with an invitation from artist Brooke Holve https://www.brookeholve.com/ to explore the mysteries of crumpling and crushing. What happens to text on a page when the page is crumpled and then pressed flat again? What does this process tell me about the haphazard, the unpredictable and the mysterious in my pursuit of meaning?

Having focused my writing for several decades on the protection of natural systems, first with bioregionalism and watershed restoration leading into salmon protection, and finally bearing witness to climate disruption, I found myself so saddened by the blind blundering on of government and industry, propelling all life toward destruction, that I despaired. This coincided with relocating to a new home in a distinctly different microclimate. Closer to the coast, surrounded by a magnificent but unfamiliar oak forest, with my library and papers still in the old house, I felt such a sense of uprooting only the most mundane events grounded me — the puppy still being house-trained, the elder cat’s inability to make it to the cat-box, the beautiful garden my husband was creating, and bringing back to health the old apple trees still bearing fruit at the bottom of the hill.

Although I was intrigued by the idea of crumpling and crushing, I was also baffled. Brooke was thinking of text, or she would not have invited a poet to join her project. But she was pounding rock to make ink and folding pages to simulate books. How could I fit in? It wasn’t until I stumbled on the concept of precarity that I felt a link to the way Brooke talked about her creative process following what calls her into uncertainty, inviting her into what is unknown.

So little is really known about what lies ahead. Perhaps at no other time in history has the world been more un-moored. Our political system teeters on the brink of authoritarianism, wars boil in Africa, the Middle East, and Europe, the global financial system vergers on collapse — all the while the Sixth Great Extinction proceeds with heartbreaking species die-offs as the temperature of our biosphere climbs steadily higher. We have transformed life, and we do not know what will happen next. The values that determine meaning itself have been thrown into a frightening realm of question. Have we ever endured greater precarity?

Emergence from crushing is always unpredictable and unique. The result of one crumpling is never the same as another. Taking my cue from Brooke, I write and then crumple my pages. The terrors and horrors of the moment recede into a fascination with uncertainty. What happens, if led by what remains legible, I follow my curiosity? The words and phrases of legible text become a kind of thread that leads me further into the process. In the mildly destructive and transformative process of crumpling the page, one thing leads to another. From what has been lost in the creases, something else comes forth. How can I give context to these fragments? Can I find meaning in what is still-visible?

The essence of emergence is surprise. What is the world becoming? In crushing and crumpling, language suggests itself that can be transferred to other situations. Considering in particular the processes of a living system such as a watershed, soil and rocks move with water and also with wind and temperature. We cannot account for what results from the interaction of these and other more subtle processes. Precarity expresses itself in the emergence of surprising conditions and events. And language to describe the precarious evolution of a watershed provides a rich vocabulary for transitional processes applicable to other situations.

Thus the process of crushing and crumpling text leads me in two directions, one interior as I continually struggle to find meaning, the other external as I recognize the complete mystery of what is unfolding around me.

Elizabeth Carothers Herron served as Poet Laureate of Sonoma County 2022 to 2024. As Poet Laureate she initiated the Being Brave Poetry Project. In this undertaking she offered poetry workshops focused on finding and shaping language for what it means to live with courage in our daily lives. A description of the project is HERE.

LAUNCHED! Elizabeth’s newest book - 2023

“In the Cities of Sleep” order at Fernwood Press

PAST EVENT Occidental Center for the Arts - Virtual Book Launch: "Insistent Grace" March 2021.

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Insistent Grace

Order here…

 

From Insistent Grace…

TO BE CALLED

In fall foliage
the spangled lantern
of Japanese maple
lights the morning garden.
The hawthorn’s red berries,
sun-struck, glisten.
Last night the gibbous moon
ignited frost on the trash can lids.
Day or night
reverence rises from the ordinary.
To hold the moment,
desiring nothing,
is to behold eternal presence simply
waiting recognition.
The quiet heart
receives. The ungrasping eye sees
how the world longs to give itself,
how underneath all longing
we long to be called
to praise.