writing process | nichepoetryandprose

Posts Tagged ‘writing process’

growing and gathering – a sense of place

The theme of eating local foods has its essence in the idea of ‘place’. The book ‘The 100 Mile Diet – A Year of Local Eating’ by Alisa Smith and J.B. MacKinnon (2007), introduced many to the idea of eating foods grown within a certain radius of home. Eating local is also place-based in terms of the settings we associate with local foods – the woods, the blueberry field, the home garden, the local farm, the roadside stand, and, of course, the farmers market are all places associated with obtaining food from local sources.

‘Place’ is a complex topic. Most of my poems about ‘growing and gathering’ include at least a little information about the ‘place’ where foods are found. Some poems, however, are specifically about ‘place’, and I want to group these together in my manuscript.

The poems I will include under the theme of ‘place’ will be focused on habitat, landscape, local food traditions, and the people-based concept of ‘home’.

1. the ‘place’ where plants grow

Plants, of course, depend on their habitat to live. The ideal ‘place’ for a plant is determined by the availability of moisture, light and nutrients. These factors are, in part, the result of climate, soil type, slope, exposure, and interactions with other plants and animals. In my collection, I have poems about the habitat of seaside plants, the need for water in landscapes where water is scarce, and why woodland plants often bloom in the early spring, when light is most available.

2. plants shape their surroundings and their landscape

Plants create habitat, modifying the regimes of moisture, light and nutrients in a local space. Plants also help to create the broader landscape. I have poems about how ripening apples change the space under an apple tree, how large and small-scale characteristics affect the value of a property, and how plants contribute to the way landscape appears.

3. ‘place-based’ food traditions

As a result of the interaction between wild life and the landscape, people have access to different kinds of foods and develop area-specific wild food traditions. In New Brunswick, fiddleheads of the Ostrich Fern (Matteuccia Struthiopteris (L.) Todaro) are abundant in the spring, along the banks of rivers and wetlands, and many New Brunswickers consider a feed of cooked fiddleheads to be a rite of spring. In Newfoundland, a relative of the blackberry, the Bakeapple (Rubus Chamaemorus L.), is common in the bogs and barrens. Children often stand beside the road, their arms out-stretched, to sell their bottles of yellow Bakeapples packed in water. I have poems about these two local foods as well as others about traditional local foods.

4. ‘place’ as a metaphor for home

Plants and their ‘place’ can be a metaphor for the relationships between humans and the spaces where they are raised, or where they live. ‘Place’ may imply ‘home’ and ideas of belonging or familiarity. Several of my poems are about this aspect of ‘place’.

As I am working on the theme of ‘place’, a song by the 1990’s band Toad the Wet Sprocket is going around in my head:

‘…show me your home
Not the place where you live
But the place where you belong…’

Toad the Wet Sprocket, ‘Something to Say’, Fear, 1991

Exploring the theme of ‘place’ with you has helped me to organise my poems, to revise them, and to understand that I still have a few poems to write toward my manuscript. I am so grateful for this blog and for all my readers!

landscape

a veil draped across bones of the earth

pointed tents supported by forest

settles in pockets, lichens and moss

beneath the cloth is texture, the way

I know life on the land, fast or slow,

near or far, through clear eyes or through tears

to know form follows function – practice

repeated, detailed observation

see the sweep of a field of brambles

also the berries, also the thorns

Published as ‘landscape’ on www.nichepoetryandprose.wordpress.com September 3, 2011

Revised

© Jane Tims 2012

Written by jane tims

August 10, 2012 at 8:23 am

Posted in edible wild, growing and gathering, writing

Tagged with eating local, edible plants, home, landscape, local food, nature, place, plants and animals, poetry, traditions, writing, writing process

growing and gathering – picking berries with friends

with 18 comments

As I am deciding how to organise my poetry manuscript on ‘growing and gathering’ local foods, I am considering the themes of the various poems. I think these themes will become the sections in my manuscript.

One of the first themes to emerge, perhaps the easiest to examine, is about ‘relationships’.

Although I have often picked berries alone, my best memories are of picking berries with members of my family. Both my Mom and Dad loved to pick berries. My Dad was a fast picker and I was always in silent competition with him to pick the most berries… I never won. My Mom picked berries quickly, but took the time to enjoy the fresh air, the blue sky and the expanse of the berry field. When I think of picking berries with her, I feel calm and a little lazy. My relationship with my mother-in-law was also shaped by our many berry-picking experiences; when I pick raspberries, I hear her quiet laughter in the breeze.

As I write poetry for my ‘growing and gathering’ manuscript, I have explored my relationships with the various people in my life.

Some of these are based on real experiences I have had picking berries or gathering greens. Examples include poems about trying to find an old berry field, now grown over, or how changes in a relationship can be observed over the years in the annual picking of berries. Although most of the poems are about plants, I have included production of other local foods – so a poem about beekeeping, for example, explores how two people interact during a small emergency.

In other cases, the gathering of local foods is a metaphor for some aspect of a relationship, whether good and bad. At least some of these metaphors are related to the characteristics of plants or animals – for example, the serrated edges of leaves, the slipperiness of a trout, the gentle feel and fragrance of Bedstraw, or the bitterness of taste common to so many ‘salad’ greens.

Some of the metaphor is based on the place where plants grow. Examples include the seclusion of many berry-picking spots, or the physical spaces created by rows of corn plants.

As I look over the Table of Contents for my manuscript, I realise some poems will be stronger if placed within another theme. So I have moved, for example, a poem about picking berries over a three-week period from the theme on ‘relationships’ to a theme about ‘change’.

This consideration of the themes in my poetry has given me a good start to organising the poems, and identifying gaps I have to fill. I know now there are lots of gaps, and many poems yet to write!

Bitter Blue

of all the silvery summer days we spent none so warm sun on

granite boulders round blue berry field miles across hazy miles

away from hearing anything but bees

and berries

plopping in the pail

beside you I draped my lazy bones on bushes crushed berries and

thick red leaves over moss dark animal trails nudged between rocks

baking berries brown musk rising to meet blue heat

or the still fleet scent

of a waxy berry bell

melting in my mouth crammed with fruit sometimes pulled from

laden stems more often scooped from your pail full ripe blue pulp

and the bitter shock of a hard green berry never ripe

or a shield bug

with frantic legs

and an edge to her shell

~
~

Published as: ‘Bitter Blue’, Summer 1993, The Amethyst Review 1 (2)

Published on www.nichepoetryandprose.wordpress.com on July 31, 2011

© Jane Tims 2012

Warning:

1. never eat any plant if you are not absolutely certain of the identification;

2. never eat any plant if you have personal sensitivities, including allergies, to certain plants or their derivatives;

3. never eat any plant unless you have checked several sources to verify the edibility of the plant.

Written by jane tims

July 6, 2012 at 6:31 am

Posted in edible wild, growing and gathering, picking berries, writing

Tagged with art, eating local, edible plants, family, local food, metaphor, nature, pencil drawing, picking berries, poetry, relationships, writing process

growing and gathering

with 13 comments

Many of my recent posts are associated with my writing project, ‘growing and gathering’. My aim is to write a poetry manuscript about collecting and producing local foods. So far, I have concentrated on ‘edible wild plants’ in my blog, but the full scope of the project will include poems on gardening and other aspects of aquiring local foods.

My process so far has included research into a particular wild plant, a trip to see it in the wild and perhaps gather it for eating, a piece of prose on the characteristics of the plant, a pencil drawing (becoming more and more a part of my thought process), and a poem or poems about the edible plant.

As my project progresses, I am generating many poems. I am also starting to think about how I will assemble this information into a manuscript.

One of the first steps toward assembling the manuscript is to decide what themes are emerging. This will help me decide how the poems relate to one another, as well as identify the gaps.

Major themes so far are:

~ companionship (for example, picking berries with a friend)

the results of an hour of blackberry picking with my husband

~ competition (for example, trying to get those hazelnuts before the squirrels)

hazelnuts on the tree…almost ripe…who will get them, the squirrels or me?

~ time (this includes historical uses of wild edibles, as well as seasonal and lifetime components of eating local)

a ‘graveyard’ of old apple trees

~ ethics (this includes ecosystem concerns about eating wild plants when they are struggling to survive in reduced habitat)

a patch of Trout Lily in the hardwoods… edible… but should I harvest when this type of habitat is disappearing?

~ barriers to gathering local foods (for example, why do I buy bags of salad greens when Dandelion greens, Violet leaves and Wood-sorrel grow right outside my door?)