Interview by Zoë Brigley
Welcome back to our series on writing the #MoreThanHuman. We offer a set of interviews with poets and writers on how they approach writing about the environment. The more-than-human is a phrase that seeks to side-step traditional nature-culture dualisms and draw attention to the unity of all life as a kind of shared commonwealth existing on a fragile planet. It also reminds us humans that there is more to life, that there is more world, than the human. It relocates us in relation to the mystery.
Here, we meet Hilary Hares whose poems appear widely online and in print. She has also achieved success in various competitions. Hilary has an MA in Poetry from Manchester Metropolitan University and her pamphlets, A Butterfly Lands on the Moon, Red Queen, and Mr Yamada Cooks Lunch for Twenty Three are available through: www.hilaryhares.com
They will come …
If you build it, they will come – Kevin Costner, Field of Dreams, 1989
The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is a vast area of spinning debris, twice the size of Texas. It spans the waters from the West Coast of North America to Japan. Against all the odds it is starting to be colonised.
Zoë Brigley: This poem has such a dark edge and humour with the reference to Field of Dreams, except here it is a ginormous garbage patch being built inadvertently or neglectfully. I wondered if this was a veiled criticism of the US in referencing a movie and sport integral to the American way?
Hilary Hares: It was certainly pent-up frustration that the developed world seems unable to do something meaningful about what’s happening to the planet. We channel huge amounts of energy and resources into areas like sport, but I can’t help feeling that we’re looking in the wrong direction. Regret is a theme which runs strongly throughout the movie and it might be all that’s left to us when it’s too late to reverse the devastation.
Zoë: There’s a feeling of a moral tale or allegory here, and I wonder if those might be important genres to return to in a time of ecological emergency?
Hilary: I was certainly brought up in a realm of myths and parables and the lessons they teach us are as relevant now as they ever were. Allegory has the power to move us because these stories are memorable. Just think of the impact George Orwell’s 1984 had and continues to have on our world view. So yes, I’m all for employing every tool we have in the toolbox if it is instrumental in shaking people out of their apathy.
Zoë: I like how we have the point of view of algae and barnacles at the end of the poem. It’s a clever move which frames the organisms as seeking survival in much the way that humans do, while it also highlights the stubborn persistence of life. How can we as poets and writers shift the mindset of readers in thinking about nature?
Hilary: The devil, as always, is in the detail and poets often focus on small things to tell a bigger story. Once you start talking about statistics that run into the billions or trillions, numbers become meaningless, but who won’t be rooting for a tiny bivalve clinging to the idea of staying alive against all the odds. A poem has the power to make us gasp. It’s a gift we give to our readers and an opportunity to ask them to look at the world in a different way.
Zoë: Which writers, artists, or thinkers have influenced your ecological imagination?
Hilary: Heavens, where to begin?! As a child, The Jungle Book and Aesop’s Fables spring to mind. The great David Attenborough, with his gentle powers of persuasion, has surely been instrumental in opening all our eyes and, in terms of poetic influences, I’m a big fan of Robert Frost and Mary Oliver. Myra Schneider, whose study group I’ve attended for over 10 years, has written extensively about the subject and has a new collection, The Disappearing, featuring similar themes which are approached from a different angle, coming out next year. Di Slaney, who won the 2022 Plough Prize with her wonderful poem ‘History of a Field’, is also a fantastic advocate for the natural world.
Zoë: Is there anything else you want to tell us about this poem?
Hilary: As an insomniac, I often spend a good proportion of my night hours in the company of the World Service and it was a report on the Great Pacific Garbage Patch that shook me fully awake one early morning and inspired me to put its story on the page. In an age when doomscrolling is a constant, I was thrilled to hear a note of hope, and I’ve tried to capture this in the poem and in many others in my new collection, Tilting at Windmills, which is about to be published by Poetry Space.
Modron Magazine 