Sarah B. Cahalan writes about art, books, natural history, landscape and human connections in the context of deep time, as well as the layers of places and how those correspond with our own layers as people moving through time and place. She is based in Ohio (USA).
You can read her poem Syllogisms in the October 2023 issue.
Would you like to tell us a little bit more about your poem? For instance, how or why you wrote it, or perhaps provide some extra context?
Recently, I’ve been revisiting the coastal landscapes of New England, often because someone has died or is dying. Places I loved for their own sake have acquired added significance through this period of cycling back. And of course that landscape itself is both fragile and ever-changing. I am pretty fixated on overconsumption, quick-(but inadequate) fixes, etc.; considering the variety of ways people interact with “the natural world” helps me sort my thoughts on those topics. I think the seaweed/cellophane/plastic connection came from that. And the many connotations of veils, thin places, membranes, etc.
Do you have a collection of poetry or even a single poem that acts as a touchstone?
I go back to Virgil’s Georgics a lot, David Ferry’s translation but also my good old Loeb edition. More recently, Joanna Lilley’s Endlings.
If you didn’t write poetry, how do you think you might access the same fulfillments that poetry offers in your life?
I get similar satisfaction from curatorial work, research, and instruction with rare books and other historical artifacts. There is some common ground with poetry: broad curiosity, allowing for connections between a variety of topics, selecting objects/images with the goal of provoking a response from a student/viewer/reader.
What are you working on now?
I am playing around with connections among colours and making. I’ve also been thinking about the little creatures of the tidal flats in Brewster, Massachusetts, which is sometimes easier to do at a remove, actually (I live in Ohio).
Are there other art forms that inspire or inform your poetry?
Sometimes, historical artifacts such as old books or artworks, including the materials they are made from and the people who have used them. Also, books of natural history and other things that get classified as “nature writing,” especially about regions that matter a lot to me… I like the specificity of something such as a diagram of a plant or someone’s observation from a specific day in history. Also, texts like saints’ lives, the accounts of mystics. I have this idea that it would be fun to put Henry Beston and Julian of Norwich in conversation with each other, somehow.
How do you make space for poetry in your daily routine?
The 45 minutes between dropping off one of my kids and my own standing medical appointment have been surprisingly fertile.
What are you reading or watching or listening to lately that intrigues or inspires you?
Soil, by Camille Dungy. There is so much to praise about it, but right now I especially love how she addresses the work of incorporating family into the experience of gardening, finding the wondrous in your own backyard (even on an awful day). Caregiving is full of moments of grace, but it can sometimes feel like an impediment to my impulse to rhapsodize about snails and flowers and old books. So I appreciate examples of combining different types of care-work, or of making it through periods when balance just isn’t possible.