I enjoy sharing multispecies poetry with others. Below are three collaborative projects.
1. BRUTIFUL!
For this project, I reached out to fellow dog enthusiasts and asked them to play along - with their own dogs. Dogs with very different backgrounds, habits and specialisations participated in this creative poetry experiment, which resulted in an exhibition "Brutiful!" at the National Poetry Library London: there was one dog who had retired from a career in customs, others who haven’t had the best start in life; the talents of designer breeds meet those of streeties; some worked as collectives, others as lonesome geniuses. Participating humans were similarly diverse, yet they had one thing in common: They were all curious to learn how creative their dogs can be — and they with them — and what we humans can learn from dogs about perceiving and understanding the world.
1. BRUTIFUL!
For this project, I reached out to fellow dog enthusiasts and asked them to play along - with their own dogs. Dogs with very different backgrounds, habits and specialisations participated in this creative poetry experiment, which resulted in an exhibition "Brutiful!" at the National Poetry Library London: there was one dog who had retired from a career in customs, others who haven’t had the best start in life; the talents of designer breeds meet those of streeties; some worked as collectives, others as lonesome geniuses. Participating humans were similarly diverse, yet they had one thing in common: They were all curious to learn how creative their dogs can be — and they with them — and what we humans can learn from dogs about perceiving and understanding the world.
One of the results is probably best described as book art. I call it The Book of OUR Dogs, and it contains erasure poems co-created with dogs. I chose an old general non-fiction book on dogs (their origins, breeds, selection and treatment etc.), both because copyright would not be an issue and the English and style that it is written in - and hence will be part of the human language that goes into each multispecies poem - is a bit dated, making for nicer vocabulary than if we had worked on the latest ethology title. For instance, the author, G.W. Knowles has no issues at all to quote Socrates or use archaic expressions, all of which can be put to good poetic use when reworking the pages, which I had cut out of the book and sent to collaborators around the world. Collaborating humans were encouraged to include the creative-destructive work into an enjoyable activity for the dogs - whether that was contact lying while the human literally doodled away on the page, inspired by the dog's curls, or whether fur was taken by means of a pleasurable massage and then applied to the page later on, whether the page was wrapped up in a tug toy for a vigorous game together or given to the dogs to scratch or tear it apart according to their own ideas of fun, or, of course, just a walk. Below is a selection of pages.
I keep adding to this project, so if you and your dog would like to receive a page to work on it, get in touch.
I keep adding to this project, so if you and your dog would like to receive a page to work on it, get in touch.
What I particularly like:
- Multispecies poetry is fun for the dogs because they really are the lead artists.
- Its creation can be illuminating for the humans. Many have told me that they now look at their dog differently, or that they have cherished the space and time they had dedicated to this unusual collaboration.
- The poems can be read by dogs, too - just as with what humans think and feel about poetry, there remains something that is ineffable or beyond words that cannot be shared. That is not a bug but a feature - and it really is interesting to see how different dogs respond to different poems!
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2. Lieblingsgeschichten und Wunderwerke - Ein Tag Nature Writing für Kinder
(Pet stories and works of wonder - one day of nature writing for children) More soon .. 3. Multispecies Poetry for "Philosophy in the Wild: Finding Hope in Mixed Communities" More soon ... https://www.womeninparenthesis.co.uk/philosophy-in-the-wild-finding-hope-in-mixed-communities/ |
