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Q&A with Paul Košir, poet and author of Perspectives of Nature

A host of bluffs and relict pines, / man’s contour farms, historic mines / are found throughout the Driftless Lands / some made by God, some, human hands. ~ from “Driftless Area” in Perspectives of Nature by Paul Košir

Spring has officially arrived–ahhh. With sunny days and blue skies, this is the perfect time to soak up some much-needed vitamin D as you take a walk or hit the trail. But don’t go alone. Paul Košir, a poet from LaCrosse, Wisconsin, offers you a companion in poetry.

Košir’s chapbook entitled Perspectives of Nature: Scientifically Romantic and Experiential Nature Poetry offers poems–for all seasons, along with space for your own notes and observations.

A former teacher, Košir decided to blend his two loves–science and poetry, so that anyone might be inspired by the beauty around them but also by the ways in which nature builds that beauty. Košir taps into an audience who enjoys the rhythm and cadence of the genre, as well as the reader who wonders about the why and how of science. Perspectives of Nature is a book of lessons in 32 poems from “Sun Dogs” to “Bird Song.”

I’m honored to host Paul today to talk about his chapbook of poems. And as always, there’s a giveaway. CLICK HERE to enter for a chance to win one of two signed copies of Perspectives of Nature.

Now, welcome Paul Košir!

Christi Craig (CC): Tell us about the origins of this chapbook–what inspired you to mix lessons in science with the prose in poetry?

Paul Košir (PK): The origin of the chapbook was a handful of poems I wrote in the late 1980s while I was the naturalist at Wyalusing State Park near Prairie du Chien, WI. As the naturalist, it was my job to interpret the natural world for park visitors, to describe and explain it. That job, that way of life, inspired me to mix science lessons in with my lines of poetry. I found my voice – writing beautiful, instructive verses.

But then I didn’t write another poem for 20 years. When I did write again, I began to add a natural perspective to my poems and was pleased with the result. With a new style emerging, I joined the Wisconsin Writers Association. The WWA published 4 of my poems in an anthology, which introduced me to the anthology’s compiler. He offered to guide me through the publication of a book of my poems with science themes. I began writing poetry in earnest to create enough poems for a book, not only because I wanted to write, but also because I felt I should write.

CC: A few of my favorite poems are: 1) “Warblers” (“They never stop moving, I can’t get a good look; / when they finally sit perched, it’s not like in the book.”), because I’ve lost my focus in the middle of a bird book, wondering if there was a misprint on the number of–what seemed to be–the same image of a black and yellow bird with a million different names; and 2) “Hummingbird Trap,” which is a beautifully written poem about your experience holding such a delicate bird: Through porous bones I felt its heart, its tiny, racing, living part. // With lightest touch, I held the life that on each front found danger rife. I’ve seen hummingbirds up close but never close enough to touch; I can only imagine this–amazing! I would love to hear more about this moment.

PK: One day, the landlady where I stayed while I was the naturalist at Wyalusing State Park ran up to me and said, “Paul, Paul, a hummingbird is trapped and can’t get out!” Seeing the panic in her face, I ran after the excited woman to where the bird was trapped.

I thought it would be easy to coax the bird to perch on a pole and set it free, but after several failed attempts, I realized I’d have to take matters – and the bird – into my own hands. Knowing the hummer would have to eat soon, I quickly climbed up to it with a bag.

I paused just long enough to make a plan. I’d have to grasp it around its body gently enough that it wouldn’t be crushed but firmly enough that it wouldn’t struggle. Then I’d have to place it in the bag and close it enough that the bird wouldn’t escape. Only then could I attempt the climb back down with a bag in one hand that I couldn’t hold too tight near the hummer, but also couldn’t ease up on.

I was so afraid I’d crush the female rubythroat but grabbed her, anyway. Her heart was beating even faster than mine. I had to look at her again because I couldn’t believe I actually had a live hummingbird in my hand. I had never felt anything like it.

I felt… life.

The next thing I knew, I was on the ground, letting her go.

CC: What’s unique about your chapbook is how each poem is paired with a page for reader’s notes and often a few footnotes on terms or concepts found within the poem (like kettle and drift and esker from “Ice-Age Impact”). I love a book that engages a reader in more ways than one: in the words on the page but in the invitation to explore on their own. What’s the best way someone might use your book in a workshop or class on creativity or poetry for young readers?

PK: Earlier this month I used Perspectives of Nature for examples in a workshop on writing about nature I taught to a group of teens and adults. It could be used in the same way to teach workshops on poetry in general or on specific topics in science for many levels of study.

In a classroom setting, the book’s glossary entries could be used to familiarize students with science topics before in-depth study or as review after in-depth study. The book’s sections for notes are ideal for portfolio evaluation and environmental education objectives. For continuing and self-taught students, writing notes in these sections could form a journal that would be its own reward and act as a reference for years to come.

Perspectives of Nature engages and educates readers about scientific content and concepts in ways and that other sources cannot and it educates them by appealing to different intelligences. Using the book can be adapted to any students – old, young, or young-at-heart.

CC: Who are your go-to poets?

PK: Certainly, Robert Frost is a go-to poet for me; I even quoted him in one of my poems. And Emily Dickinson. Those are the two poets whose poems I like the best and with whose work I am most familiar and whose poetry is most like mine. But I’ve read so little poetry, even of theirs that I can’t honestly say that I’ve been influenced by either of them…or any other poet, for that matter.

My scientifically romantic style of poetry is truly singular, I’ve found no poetry to act as a pattern for it nor any poet to act as a model for me. I am the standard-bearer of this new genre.

CC: Where is your favorite place to explore science in nature?

PK: Wyalusing State Park is definitely my favorite place to explore science in nature. It has such unusual geology and plant life and bird life that it is a phenomenal place to do so, either formally or informally. The park was the venue or genesis for many of my poems, especially the canoe trail.

I have found science in nature and subsequently written poems about it in many other places I hold in favor: on our land near Hillsboro, the bluffs of La Crosse, the shores of Lake Mendota, and caves in Kentucky, even looking out from our back yard and driving down the street. Nature is all around us, so I guess any place outside a lab that I am struck by science is, in that moment, my favorite place to explore science in nature.

About the Author

The scientifically romantic nature poetry of Paul Košir has its academic roots in his nine years as a student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. There he earned bachelor’s degrees in math, natural science, and history. In 2010 he received a master’s degree in natural resources and environmental education from UW-Stevens Point. The experiential poetry was drawn from his twelve years as the naturalist at Wyalusing State Park near Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin. He also drew on this background to write articles for Wisconsin Natural Resources and La Crosse Magazine and to publish the book Wyalusing History.

Košir has taught biology, physical science, and math at the high school level and earth science, biology, and environmental issues at the college level. As a naturalist, he taught all ages about nature through hikes, programs, and displays, something he still does occasionally as a volunteer.

Born in Milwaukee, he now lives in La Crosse with his wife and their two sons. He enjoys writing, hiking, bird-watching, gardening, traveling, and working on the family’s 13 acres in the Driftless Area near Hillsboro, Wisconsin.

DON’T FORGET: Enter the giveaway for a chance to win a copy
of Perspectives of Nature. The deadline to sign up
is Thursday, March 29th!

*Hummingbird photo (above) credit: cuatrok77 on Visualhunt.com/ CC BY-SA
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Q&A with Lynn Sloan, author of This Far Isn’t Far Enough

“Right here, I’m laying you down, Momma,” I say, but I don’t feel anything important, just unbearably tired. I start to sing, “Precious Jesus, let me live my life in thee,” and lift the urn up–it’s not heavy, it’s not light–and swing my arm in as wide an arc as I can manage, and there she goes, sifting into the air, drifting full wide between the trees and over the brush, and out across the creek I can’t see, toward the distant houses with the lighted windows, through the night, maybe flying all the way to Egypt.

~ from “The Sweet Collapse of the Feeble” in This Far Isn’t Far Enough

Letting go is never easy. We are rooted in tradition, in promises, in expectations. And yet, we inevitably reach that moment when the old, the familiar, the safe no longer serves, when we must release whatever anchors us in order to survive.

Lynn Sloan’s new collection of stories, This Far Isn’t Far Enough, is full of characters faced with the choice of letting go. For some, the choice is liberating, soothing. For others, the release is pinching, dangerous. In either case, such decisions are never simple, never so clean in consequence.

I’m honored to host Lynn Sloan today to talk about This Far Isn’t Far Enough. Her opening story, “Ollie’s Back,” will be read on NPR’s Selected Shorts in March. Here, gain insight into her work and enter the giveaway for a copy of her book (courtesy of Fomite Press & Caitlin Hamilton Marketing & Publicity). Sign up by Tuesday, February 27th. Now, welcome Lynn Sloan!

Christi Craig (CC): This Far Isn’t Far Enough brings together a myriad of stories about a young woman who wants to be a prizefighter, a widow living under the thumb of her husband even after he’s gone, and about an artist lost between fantasy and reality–just to name a few. Which was the first story you wrote, and how did this collection grow from there?

Lynn Sloan (LS): The earliest story included in this collection is “The Sweet Collapse of the Feeble,” the one about a young woman who wants to become a prizefighter. That story came to be when I had a friend who wanted to become a prizefighter. After serious training, she invited me to her first fight. “What must your mother think?” I wondered as I watched my friend get pummeled, and pummel her opponent. My friend had not invited her mother to that fight or to any that came afterward. As far I know, her mother never found out about my friend’s short, but prize-filled boxing career. I had a little baby at that time, and I must have been grappling with how one adjusts to one’s beloved child getting beat up.

You asked if my collection grew from there. In fact, this collection didn’t grow up, it collected, like filings around a magnet. I like variety. Each time I finish one story, I want to try something different with my next. After I’ve written from a middle-aged mother’s point of view, in first person, as in “The Sweet Collapse of the Feeble,” I want to try something entirely different: a naïve Army grunt, his third person point of view, and I want to try a different time frame, after WWII in Germany, before my own time. This became “The Gold Spoon.” Investigating varied characters and situations is a way of challenging what I do, and is my pleasure. A couple of years ago, I broke my ankle and was told I must keep my cast above my heart-level for a few weeks. Stuck on my couch, without the slightest urge to write, I decided to clean up my computer files. As I re-read these stories, I discovered that certain emotions link them all, even though the circumstances are different. Discovering this was an “ah hah” moment. My characters ache for love, they are compelled by regret and loss, and they can’t escape their pasts. These recurrent emotions and desires were the magnet that drew these stories together into this collection.

CC: In an interview on The Literary Fiction Book Review, you say, “Fiction reveals how we live beneath the surface of the obvious and the visible.” I’ve been ruminating on this sentence for a while now. Do you mean fiction allows us to embrace certain truths that we choose to ignore otherwise? Or do you mean fiction gives us more liberty to explore a character, a situation, a reaction to such depths that we uncover a piece of our core we hadn’t known existed?

LS: What’s below the surface is where the action is. Gestures and words can be deceptive or genuine. And isn’t everything more complicated than it appears? We read news items about a postal worker who leaves a million dollars to a medical school, and we wonder what did he deny himself to save that money? We read about a rancher who lined his driveway with Cadillacs half buried in the dirt, and we wonder if this was an expression of mockery, fury, or delight, or some impulse we haven’t thought of. You ask if writing might allow us writers to examine what we might prefer to ignore in our own lives, to “uncover a piece of our core”? I would say that writing opens us to empathy. By probing our characters’ needs and desires, we become more empathic with those unlike ourselves, and perhaps even those who are unlikeable. What makes this empathy possible is understanding ourselves and the links that connect us to others.

CC: With the last question, I’m thinking of “The Collaborator” and the protagonist, Daveen, who is caught in the politics of tenure and gender and her own version of #MeToo. I imagine this story was written well before the movement, so I wonder, when reality takes on the role of fiction and reveals how we live and think below the surface (which isn’t always pretty), does it change the way you view your work in retrospect? Do you ever think back on a character like Daveen and wonder how her story might shift if it were set in a post-#MeToo time?

LS: You are right. This story was written fifteen years ago, when feminists were regarded as scolds, hopeless bores, and pathetically retrograde. That’s how Daveen is regarded, especially since she broke off a friendship with a male colleague because of his sexual relationships with students. What was true when this story was written, what was true in the world that Daveen inhabits, and what is true today: patriarchy rules. In institutions like colleges, some men with power are attracted to younger, less powerful women, and it’s also true, some young women are attracted to men who possess power. Sex and power are two of the most elemental forces in culture. In “The Collaborator” sex, sexual politics, and power are the forces operating, but the story is about one woman, a thwarted feminist, and her response to a student whose sexual game upends her sense of self.

Each fictional character lives in a particular moment, as we all do. One of the things that interests me is how lives are lived within a historical context, and that context determines choices and possibilities. For Daveen, if she were living in this #MeToo time, she could turn to Human Resources with her complaints about sexual misconduct and she’d be taken seriously. If she were living twenty years earlier, she wouldn’t have a tenured position. Every story is set in a moment.

CC: What are you reading these days?

LS: I’ve just finished reading Joan Silber’s wonderful novel Improvement. Right now, I’m reading Patrick Modiano’s Such Fine Boys, a marvelous, moving novel that follows a group of school friends who are thrown into adult situations for which they were unprepared. Both novels include many characters, many stories braided together. Multiple stories—that’s what I like about story collections, too.

CC: What fuels your writing…coffee, tea, a certain view from the window, or a favorite pen? 

LS: My desk. It’s a small desk in a small room that’s really a hallway, but sitting at my desk focuses me. Sometimes I want to write somewhere else, like in a comfy chair by a window, or in nice weather, I’ll want to write outside, but as soon as my thoughts and words start to flow, I need to get to my desk.

~

Lynn Sloan is a writer and photographer. Her stories have appeared in Ploughshares, Shenandoah, and American Literary Review, among other publications, and been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. She is the author of the novel Principles of Navigation (2015 Fomite). Her fine art photographs have been exhibited nationally and internationally. For many years she taught photography at Columbia College Chicago, where she founded the journal Occasional Readings in Photography, and contributed to Afterimage, Art Week, and Exposure. She lives in Evanston, Illinois with her husband.

Don’t forget: Enter the book giveaway by Tuesday, February 27th,
for a chance to win a copy of This Far Isn’t Far Enough.

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Suzanne Conboy-Hill: The Audio/Book that isn’t an audio-book.

I can’t always trace back to the day I met a particular writer, especially when that writer lives overseas and the furthest east I’ve ever travelled is Massachusetts, years before I took my writing seriously. But with the Internet and social media, the “when” doesn’t matter; the fact is, near or far, in state or not, we can fall into conversation with writers from all over fairly easily.

Such is the case any time I connect with Suzanne Conboy-Hill, a former psychologist, a writer (and an artist!) who lives in England. Suzanne has published essays, flash fiction, sci-fi, and more. Besides being an author, she is also the editor of a very cool anthology, Let Me Tell You A Story. You purchase the anthology in print form, but this is no ordinary book; it’s a collection of stories and poems with a unique reader in mind. I’m thrilled to host Suzanne with the inside story, and there’s a giveaway. I have two copies of her anthology ready to share. CLICK HERE to enter the giveaway by Tuesday, February 6th. 

Now, welcome Suzanne Conboy-Hill!

Let Me Tell You A Story – the audio/book that isn’t an audio-book.

Anyone who’s ever squinted at a book or a leaflet because they forgot their glasses will have had a glimpse of what it’s like to struggle with reading. Others struggle because of a global intellectual difficulty, some because they’re reading in a second language, and a good many because of dyslexia or a neurological condition. Not being able to read means you’re out of the loop and dependent on others to mediate the world for you.

Some years ago I sat with a man with intellectual disabilities who was about to be evicted from his home because he had broken the terms of his tenancy. My job as a psychologist was to understand why that was and try to help, so I started by getting him to read the contract he had signed. He read every word but so slowly and hesitantly that when I probed his understanding, it was clear he had no idea of what he’d read. He had guessed a lot, misunderstood basic words, and taken so long with each sentence that he’d lost any sense of it by the time he reached the end. From the start to the finish of each string of words, his was a hiccupping disconnect of sounding-out and misidentifications.

This goes for fiction just as much as fact – trip over words often enough and you give up, thinking the book or poem is ‘too hard’ for you. Or your reading is punctuated by dictionary searches to help make sense of it, which staggers fluency like speed bumps in the road. Personally, I have a problem with poetry – I read it as though I need to get it finished before some hidden timer goes off and it explodes. The craft and artistry is lost to me. Listening though, that’s a different matter. Hearing the weight applied to some words and the air lifting others; the cadences and the way some parts speed up, wind right down, or drop me onto a cliff edge with a two word sentence: those things become apparent when I hear a poem read.

I wanted to bring this to more people: to readers who need a nudge to find the music in the prose; to struggling readers who can’t hear rhythms over the noise of working out the individual words; to those who already read well but need help hearing words in a new language; and to people who can’t read at all due to cognitive limitations, neurological conditions, or plain old dodgy eyesight.

Luckily, the stars and planets aligned when phones became so smart they could carry apps that unlocked all sorts of worlds with the prod of a finger. Music, audio books, anything, available at a touch. When one of those apps also scanned the QR codes beginning to appear on envelopes and the sides of vans owned by enterprising businesses, the possibility of using that combination to bring the voices of authors straight from the page was not just feasible but easy.

How to demonstrate the idea took some thought. It had to be entertaining and comprise short pieces that might suit different audiences; a buffet not a four course fish dinner.

I chose writers I knew could both write and perform, and material that had already been published so I didn’t have to judge. We also used professional recording studios wherever possible. We were exacting – the audio had to match the text precisely. After all, if the idea was to support reading, we couldn’t betray the trust of struggling readers by allowing the two versions to differ.

Only one of us had ever recorded our work and you’ll hear the quality of that in Phillippa Yaa de Villiers’[1] beautiful readings of her poems. Lyn Jennings also has a profoundly microphone-ready voice. Speech and drama trained, Lyn can project through brick walls but also soften to a whisper when she needs to. The rest of us: Anne O’Brien[2], Tracy Fells[3], Nguyen Phan Que Mai[4], and I, were novices, but you will hear Irish, Vietnamese, and South African voices along with English Received Pronunciation, some of it with hints of Sussex or Yorkshire popping up like a dash of cinnamon in coffee.

This book is, I think, the first of its kind, and I hope not the last. In particular I hope people take the idea and use it to help anyone who is out of the loop. Community magazines, health leaflets, voting slips, the information inside packages you almost need a microscope to read. QR codes bring a personal reader to anyone who, for whatever reason, has trouble with written information or would just like to read along with a poet or storyteller the way they did as a child at bedtime.

There’s plenty more on the Readalongreads[5] site that might help. If you have questions please ask, and if you get a QR project up and running, I’d love to hear about it.

Suzanne Conboy-Hill

PS. A review would be fab!

Website: http://www.conboy-hill.co.uk/
Twitter: @strayficshion
Blog: http://conboyhillfiction.com/

[1] Phillippa was commissioned to write and deliver the Commonwealth Poem in 2014 before Queen Elizabeth II. She is currently a PhD candidate at Lancaster university, UK.
[2] Anne won the Bath Short Story award in 2016 and is also a PhD candidate at Lancaster university, UK.
[3] Tracy graduated in Creative Writing with Distinction from the university of Chichester in 2016. She was the Canada and Europe Finalist for the Commonwealth Short Fiction prize in 2017.
[4] Que Mai delivered the official International Women’s Day poem in 2014. She too is a PhD candidate at Lancaster university, UK.
[5] https://readalongreads.com/about/; https://readalongreads.com/readalongreads-2/; https://readalongreads.com/the-science-part/; https://readalongreads.com/who-is/

WHERE TO FIND THE BOOK

CLICK HERE to enter the giveaway for a chance to win one of two copies. Also, Let Me Tell You a Story is available from both Amazon (UK and US) and direct from Lulu.

ABOUT SUZANNE CONBOY-HILL

One-time artist, long-time NHS clinician, now-time word wrangler. Academic alphabet: BA(Hons), PhD, MPhil, MSc, MA. The first four in various kinds of psychology 1978-1998 and the last in creative writing 2014. Nurturing provided by Goldsmiths’ College (university of London), University College London, Institute of Psychiatry/Maudsley Hospital, Leicester university, and university of Lancaster. 

Forthcoming titles from Suzanne include Fat Mo, a novella telling the story of a young woman groomed and entrapped by the charismatic man for whom she works, and Writing as P Spencer-Beck, Not Being First fish and other diary dramas, also available via Amazon and Lulu. (A sample image from the illustrated edition, due in 2018, shown right.)