Abstract
These poems and one video danced poem explore the relationship between the sea, land and ecology and shift the relationship to the ecology and climate crisis through a visceral intimacy. The poems emerge from dancing, kayaking, swimming, walking, in liminal spaces between land and sea. The poems serve as an embodied and poetic place of inquiry. My invitation is for the reader to walk along the shore of a poetics of the sea, in hope that by paying attention to what we care for now will lead us into a future we desire.
Keywords
Author dancing. Photo credit: Michele Mateus
Sea Vespers
we are born in fluid
conceive in fluid
grieve in fluid
bodies are mostly made up
of water
salinity of tears and sea
a duet of consistencies
swimming, weeping, paddling
all are prayers
sea vespers
for the planet.
I grew up theorizing through the flesh. However, I did not know that is what I was doing. Traipsing on the rocks of the Atlantic Coast of a small peninsula town outside of Boston, Massachusetts, the ecology of this place formed my being in ways that continue to shape me. I have had a lifelong connection to the ocean—walking, swimming, kayaking, and dancing on the edge between land and sea. My childhood formed the somatic practices which connect to salt water, and here I not only find life, but my scholarship, site-specific performance, poetry, and solace informed by this fluid terrain (Snowber 2022).
Mary Oliver says, “Poems arrive ready to begin. Poets are the only transport.” (Oliver 2017, 28). For me, writing poetry is a kind of transport from one world to another. Poetry has been the transport to see the sea differently; a long love relationship where care is at the heart of this connection. When we love, we care. When we love the earth, the sea, and beings there is an ethics of care. So, I am interested in how the poetic and dance can shift our relationship to the natural world. What propels me is how an embodied connection to the oceans in present time can foster a different relationship to the future. Integrating poetry and dance within site-specific practices open a generative space to develop an intimate communion with the sea, shifting perception. My hope is that poetics can increasingly have a place in futures research, where the poetic, philosophical and political traverse geographies.
The following poems come out of my somatic practices connected with the ocean, and particularly the ocean in danger. I invite you into reading these as rocks along the shore. Stop and pause into the ripples they make. Breathe in between and let the visceral intimacy of a liminal space between land and see catch you and hold you. These poems serve as an embodied and poetic place of inquiry (Prendergast, Leggo and Sameshima 2009; Snowber 2016, 2017). I do not want to explain them; let them wash over you, allow them to transport you to the interior and exterior landscapes of your life.
Walk along the shore of a poetics of the sea. In hope that by paying attention to what we care for now will lead us into a future we desire.
Incantation
Water cycles
bathed in mystery
each
moment
a sacrament
of mysterium
welcome all of life
fluid incantation.
Seal Knowing
We saw each other
from afar, each popping
our heads out of the salt water
I, a woman, swimming in the glory
of Evans Bay on Read Island
in the Salish Sea, s/he
a seal one—I paused
not knowing if my arms
should swing behind my head
in a back stroke
or just gaze into the
eyes of the one before me.
I felt seen
for the water baby I am,
where home is found
between salt, plankton, seastars,
moon jellie—cedar laced above me
between hemlock and fir
I wonder if she knew
I too, am a seal being
assigned to human form
sometimes reluctantly, but find home
in salt water
I swam back to the dock
dried off my leathery body
sun kissed skin
marinated in morning light
Seal one came
we catch each other’s eyes
beholding creatures
just two of us
that is all we are.
Ethics of the Sea
In pursuit of research
do you ask the migratory birds
where they will rest in the winter
honeybees and butterflies
where they will fly?
In pursuit of sustainability
have you asked the endangered and threatened species
what they think of a proposed pipeline
threatening their land and feeding ground?
There is another kind of mourning here
we are but visitors and the wildlife
cannot keep being wild if their habitats
from shoreline and meadows
are put at risk
In pursuit of research
we have not listened to the earth and ocean
migratory sites are precious
temperatures of the sea are dependent
on being left alone
to keep providing home for
seals, salmon, seastars and plankton
There is an ethics to listening to the sea
one does “ethics reviews” for human subjects in universities
but there is no asking, what creation wants
Step back and listen to the lovers of the wild
save what little is left
of what we all dearly love.
Skin of Home
I am in the skin of home
with you, mother sea
immersive, I am not separate
my body poured into you
pulsing, rolling, rising
collective particles
your currents made live
though we think ourselves
floating on the surface
we go deep
we go down
porous praise
through all my cells
salt lover, here.
One Stroke
I paddle in one big arch
of light, over, under, with
the queen of prepositions
is blessing everything
how can I bring my strokes
to inhabit other rhythms
returning to one stroke
animate action
from a place of rest.
My writing and dancing are always inextricably linked. I write from the body and words come from my dancing and go back into my dances as spoken-word video poems. This poem, Bodypsalm for Resilience, comes from my time in Moreton’s Harbour, Newfoundland, another beloved place on the Atlantic coast. I invite you to view this video poem and the words are below as well. May they nurture you to return to the tides of your own beautiful lives.
Bodypsalm for Resilience
Return to the tides
of your own lives
the ebb and flow
of shifts, loss or fatigue.
Invite an ecology of heart and mind
let the earth support your body
swirl and soften with the currents
of all moving through you.
Do not forget
what calls you to joy
these are lifelines
not the deadlines which persist.
Drink daily
of where you find sustenance
return to the pulse of your own passion
rebound to small beauties
which sustain and call you back
to your own delicious life
wanting to be lived
through you.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
