Hello Precipice & Cusp Friends!
This week I’m rolling out a new monthly interview series, engaging this year’s theme of “Imperfect Repair.” This month I’m delighted to talk with author Ann M. Stinson, a friend I made within an ill-conceived writing workshop that I fled last year. But I got to meet Ann, so it was all worth it!
Ann’s 2021 memoir, The Ground At My Feet: Sustaining a Family and a Forest, is a fantastic, textured portrait of the often unseen realities of family-owned forests and place-based grief.
In our conversation we consider how the human interpretation of forests can both see and miss what is actually going on, as well as explore the brute sensations and more subtle intelligences at play in the ineluctable porosity between “humans” and “nature.”
Oh, and we continue our long-standing conversation about Mary Oliver, and how to de-glossify or de-Instagram (mis)perceptions of her poetry.
If I did all the tech right, you should be able to listen to this also just as audio! So take us out for a leisurely stroll and you can explore some of the things we talk about in real time!
Cheers,
Jennifer
Curious for more about human-nature intelligence(s)?
Check out Amrita Bohi’s monthly book club where she facilitates a discussion about a recent book in the field of nature writing or eco-spirituality.
February’s selection is: Ways of Being: Animals, Plants, Machines: The Search for Planetary Intelligence by James Bridle. It is amazing! So rich, so expansively fresh and chock full of grounded imagination.
For a link to Amrita’s information about the gathering on February 26th click here.
More-than-human-world update:
Our cats, Mama and Baby, continue to delight and flummox me as I learn more about their rhythms and forms of communication. It’s a labyrinth of sorts.
Currently trying to sort out a more slimming mix of food for them that they will actually eat. My best guess that sardines would be a sure bet has proven to be mistaken. Continue to grapple with whether having them live inside is keeping them from their “catness.”
