My theme for the 2014 TPS Poet Talk grew out of a question posed to me several years ago about poetry and natural areas. My husband Richard and I had just concluded a Hamilton Association public lecture, "Landscape Photography as Art." Our presentation was illustrated primarily with photographs by others, but we included a few of our own photographs of the Dundas Valley as well. During the question period that followed, a young lady in the audience who was familiar with my interest in poetry, asked how poetry influences the way I see when walking in natural areas. Not previously having thought about this, I mumbled something inadequate about each influencing the other. Since then, I have often reflected on her intriguing question. This Poet Talk constitutes the background for the answer I would have liked to provide that evening. Every poet experiences a unique personal journey with poetry. My particular path has been somewhat unusual in that I responded to purely visual "poetic" aspects of the natural world long before being drawn to pursue the poetry of language and words. From a young age, certain natural places seemed to fill me with a kind of thrilling visual rhythm built of colours, textures, contrasts and inevitable harmony. A photograph of Yosemite Falls in a magazine sparked a deep response that fueled some serious romantic dreaming in my teenage years (the sheer poetry of water falling!). Two years ago, I expressed in a poem some of what had captured my heart: |
Landscape as Poetry Slender surge of joy |
Yosemite Falls (recent photo, courtesy Internet) |
The rugged North Shore of Lake Superior, experienced frequently and "in the flesh," exerted an even stronger influence at that time: |
Lake Superior (photo courtesy Mary S. Hendrix) |
. . . My young heart raced, too, at the sight of “root beer” cascades pounding down Superior’s rocky passageways to union with the Great Lake. A marriage of unremitting vigour to a larger power: to grandeur, and periods of calm. Distracted by Yosemite, I stumbled; fell on slippery rocks along the shore. Tore a cavernous gouge in my leg, bled a warm cascade that led to noticing the wound I had not felt. |
The interplay of water and rock was central to my visceral response to each of these landscapes. Several years later, I also began to notice the beauty of individual trees. Some seemed to speak to me through their particular beauty of form, structure or shape; or perhaps their leaf colour or texture would capture my attention.
When Richard and I moved to Ancaster, Ontario in 1976, exploration of the rich diversity of nearby natural areas became a major focus for our free time. Rapidly, my repertoire of "poetic landscapes" expanded to include the steep-sided hills, deep ravines, woodlands, meadows, marshes and streams of the Dundas Valley.
Together, these various experiences from my youth to my mid-30s have led to a lifelong love of water, rock and trees. Soon Richard and I were irresistibly drawn to photographing the natural beauty of the Dundas Valley. Hoping to capture on film something of what we encountered on our outings, our early photographs were a disappointment, dismally failing to do justice to the beauty we saw. Moreover, we wanted our photographs to be true to our aesthetic and emotional response to the landscapes we had come to love. These goals in mind, we undertook an intensive study of the work of numerous outstanding landscape photographers, among them Ansel Adams, Eliot Porter and Ernst Haas.
The process of learning to capture images that felt true to our aesthetic and emotional response to Valley landscapes spanned a few years. Gradually we began to notice more details, compositions and moods within a landscape, and to envision these elements at a wide range of scales, from panoramic overviews to close-up detail. At the same time, we were developing better technical and artistic photographic skills. This became an interactive experience between ourselves and the landscapes we photographed. Selecting and framing compositions through a viewfinder allowed us to perceive more elements of beauty than previously caught our attention. In turn, the Valley seemed to show us more instances of exceptional "poetic" alignments of elements, as well as peak moments when light, shadow, atmospheric conditions, etc. conspired to lift a given landscape to an emotionally/ spiritually higher level. In many ways, the process of photographing poetic elements in a landscape is similar to organizing words, images, sounds and thoughts into poetry. The main difference is that "poetry" within landscapes can't be imagined and manipulated by a photographer with the ease of a poet or painter, but must be discovered and then revealed. The day came when Richard and I felt compelled to create a book celebrating the exceptional richness and variety of Dundas Valley landscapes. In 1989, we published the first of four colour photographic books, Natural Landscapes of the Dundas Valley. We each contributed photographs as well as written text for the project. I included in my sections a scattering of recently discovered poems that expressed feelings similar to what I felt about our experiences in natural areas. Two that particularly moved me were: |
The natural world is a spiritual house, where the pillars, that are alive, Wide-spread they stand, the Northland's dusky forests. |
Having discovered the joys of writing, I determined to develop better skill and artistry in this craft, and a seminal book finally brought me to poetry as language. Selections and excerpts from masterpieces of western literature, from classical Greece to the modern era, were accompanied by brief biographies of their authors. The selected works of three English Romantic poets opened new vistas of expressive possibilities and beauty for me unlike any I had known. The power and evocative imagery achieved by William Blake through very simple words stunned me: Tiger, tiger, burning bright/ In the forests of the night . . . The desire to express myself with some of these poetic qualities—imagination, rhythm, music, imagery, and deeper themes—led me to join the Tower Poetry Society in the mid-1990s. This is where the integration of landscape and photography with poetry as language finally began. It was immediately apparent that I had much to learn. Not the least of my problems was to overcome a naturally verbose style of writing that is inherently inimical to poetry. The brilliant Canadian writer Robertson Davies has said, We must sing with the voices God gave us! Here, then, lay my challenge: to find my own voice using more spare, carefully chosen language, within the discipline and tools of poetry.
Just as with photography in the 1980s, I now studied the works of great poets, and experimented with many attempts of my own. By faithfully participating in TPS poetry workshops, I learned to critique and revise my poems fearlessly. And as the native verbosity gradually attenuated, I even began to think of myself as a poet. Not surprisingly, water, rock and trees figured prominently in much of what I wrote, and continue to play an important role for me to this day, as the following examples will demonstrate. |
Stoned splayed across two boulders above water’s tumultuous slowly rising at last outcast, |
|
Such a massive oak, |
YOUR FACE They told me that your face was hard True, it is hard-edged. But hardly stern, You wear your years with grace, Ancestor. |
Cradled by Rock (excerpts) We scamper along the shingle shore |
|
|
Waterfall Meditations
Insistent, urgent power
From the base of the falls
Eyes drenched, I see
aware in her songs
Saturated to the bone, |
DANCING WITH YOU, FIRST DANCE: POLONAISE: (TANGO: . . .
CARIOCA: . . .) |
PAS DE DEUX: |
I have come to realize that my best poems often draw upon or reflect my experiences and explorations of natural landscapes, deepened through the eye of photography. While I seldom compose a poem in response to a photograph, or take a photograph for the purpose of illustrating a poem, there is often an uncanny resonance between certain of my poems and images. It is as though each constitutes a reservoir of inspiration for the other. The following poem for my sister Liisa, composed in the final weeks of her life, seemed to be given to me as a gift. Trees were a natural metaphor for expressing the depth of our relationship: |
|
The Turning of Leaves I have stood in a grove of aspens We, dear sister, are that grove of aspens, golden |
Looking back on my respective journeys with landscape, photography and poetry, I feel able at last to offer a meaningful response to the question that was the starting point for the 2014 Tower Poetry Society PoetryTALK: Poetry as language and literature has strengthened my sense of structure; of rhythm and flow, contrast and resonance; and of the paring down of elements to something that comes together as a strong, coherent whole. Poetry also asks that we look beneath the surface to discover and explore layers of meaning: to probe deeper into the essence of a thing. I would hope that these insights from poetry have made me more sensitive and aware when experiencing and responding to natural areas. Just as many of my best poems have drawn upon and reflect my experiences and response to natural areas, I feel that my best photographs of natural landscapes reflect heightened perception and sensitivity honed by my passion for poetry. For two and a half decades, I have photographed Websters Falls in all seasons and all kinds of weather, during periods of high and low water flow, and under a wide range of light and atmospheric conditions. I submit to you my most recent photograph of this endlessly fascinating place of many faces as a visual expression of the influence of my poetry on the way I see when in natural areas: |