Poetry as an Ecosystem

Through eastern philosophy, poetry can be both an embodiment and expression of ecology. Exploring the linguistic ontology of ourselves and others primarily within within Hindu and Buddhist thought, such as rebirth and interdependency, cultivates attitudes of care and compassion. This decenters principles of hierarchy and more westernised ways of knowing which are rooted in colonial and capitalist legacies.

Elusive Roots

Exploring what constitutes poetry, like any art, can reveal the nature of the world around us. Etymologically, the word poetry stems from poiesis, meaning to make or craft. There is an intertwining between words and the world, whereby language is formed from the landscape around us, just as it acts to shapes our environment. With meanings dependent on their surrounding world, the word is alive, and is continually being reborn. This changeability makes it almost futile to search for the distinct origin of poetry or language, akin to pinpointing the genesis of the world. Appreciating the underlying, even unknown roots of origin for anything reveals construction through a dynamic and shifting interconnection of the material around, and within, us. A becoming which emerges from pre-existing parts. A phenomenon of impermanence. Rekindling and reconnecting the inherent connection of ourselves with, and as, the natural world, thereby requires an appreciation where things are crafted from a constant exchange. Our existence is tied to that of the earth, bringing with it our rich and continuously developing relationship to our surroundings and language. Whether linguistically or materially, structures or beings are a transformation what has come before. A recycling. A reincarnation.

Language, as such, is living. The beginnings of poetry were through oral formations. Many religious traditions began through this form, which later became key spiritual texts, such as the Upanishads composed between 700 and 500 BC. In sacred Hindu literature, the ancient composition of these texts is thought to have been transmitted by earthly sages, Shruti, or human beings, Smriti. This presents how it is the flux of the breath and spoken word which poetry relies and lives upon, experienced within the lived changes of surrounding communities. This is depicted strongly in the storytelling of the Epic form, such as the Ramayana, foundational as both a theological and mythic text. These examples reify poetry formed from a complex and dynamic intertwining, serving a variety of purposes.

Rather than thinking of what could typically constitute a poem, be in content or imagery, we may instead shift to thinking to how we make, or craft, a poem through our care, thought and attention towards it. The form can function as a tool that opens spaces for a meditative contemplation for those receiving or creating it. Often, the so-called ‘meaning’ of a poem can be clouded in obscurity. In this lack of singular meaning, we dismiss hegemonic modes of being and are encouraged to embrace a myriad of multiple possibilities. It presents ecological ethics which contradict a categorisation or claiming of knowledge. Whether awash with lyricism or soaking into a specific image, poetry thrives from its requirement of total presence. Poetry is formed as a being, creating an experience to both inhabit and exist in.

Recycle, Reuse, Reduce

With no specific starting point to trace an origin to, the notions of linearity which stem from western enlightenment, can be dismantled. Cyclicality and regeneration are common amongst many Eastern traditions, and undercut illusions of progress, betterment and hierarchy. Rethinking the nature of language can cultivate a deeper care for ourselves, as creatures born of our environment, and that around us, and return to philosophies of cyclicality. Undermining notions of creating something new or better than before, something which encourages separating from the past, we can appreciate, as Audre Lorde famously stated, that ‘there are no new ideas, only new ways of expressing them’.

Art and language can reflect the nature of reality. We can approach language as a lived recycling and transformative borrowing. This requires an acknowledgment of substances which are already inherent within the preexisting history of language or landscape. Recycling can be mirrored in how we generate language, as well as within the word itself. The word reflects its being. Using morphology, the linguistic term for dismantling words, we can see how the prefix ‘re’ connotes a doing again, a curation of something ostensibly new from the sum of previous parts. The root of the word ‘cycle’ can point to the wheel of life, samsara, of rebirth and redeath, of renewal and decay. The last part of the word ‘ing’, a verb, reifies the action and dynamism of movement. I am, right now, am recycling words. Crafting a meaning from gathering from that which has ceased to exist in its context or from what still remains living. This line of thinking rediscovers our shared ideals and identities through language, cultivating a fertile soil of mutual care and compassion.

There are three main poetic forms which particularly emphasise a philosophy of recycling. A cento is a poem created solely by fragments of lyrics or poems. This collection or gathering of parts transforms pre-existing material to form a separate entity, usually composing a meaning other than that of its parts, thus acting as a form of recycling. The Buddhist concept of anatta, roughly translating as no fixed self, permits a fluidity for creation to form through this dynamic interchange. A found poem, also known as erasure or black out poetry, consists of consciously selecting words or phrases from a newspaper or written article. This conscious limitation of language lends itself to ‘reduce’. Lastly, cut out poems embody a reusing. Famously linked to the Dadaist movement, Tristan Zhara noted how one can ‘find yourself in the poem’. This external constraint of rearranging phrases of (typically) newspaper allows an insight towards on the abundant forms and structures of language. Cut out poems particularly resist binaries with what can be deemed useless, or useful, with what is sidelined as outsider or embraced. It mirrors that of an ecosystem where a body of text is embracing all. The three poetic forms utilise either all, selected or preexisting material to craft an art which is somewhat new, yet not distinctly different from what it was made from.

Needless to say, there are many forms of poetry, literature and art in general in which these ecological and spiritual philosophies can be embodied. The minimalism of a haiku, for example, encourages more of a care to detail for expansive reflection, whereas journalling provides a space for a more unrestricted embrace of thought. Epistles, poems written as letters, provide a clearer idea of interdependence through being rooted in addressing another. This cultivates a recognition of relationality through a quasi-dialogue. Buddhist thought recognises this as dependent arising or origination (pratītyasamutpāda) recognised that ‘from the arising of this, that arising’. The continual cycling of words acts as a mirroring of transformative flux, impermanence (anicca in Buddhist terminology) and thus presents the cyclical process of new life and creation with restoring or reusing previous material. All written art functions through forming patterns and cohesion in their various linguistic landscapes, whilst also providing a space for tension, play and multiple meanings.

In a playful knot

Diversity thrives off of opening multiplicities. An intertwining. Recognising the range of rhizomatic systems both within biological and linguistic landscapes unravels different layers of perspectives We can shift away from an anthropocentric view, threading through language and bring about an attentiveness which reduces the distinction between ourselves as creaturely beings and our inherent intertwining with the environment around us. The Hindu school of teaching, Avaita Vedanta, encompasses this non-dualistic thinking, whereby the separation is lowered, and can allow for clarity towards the shifting, unoriginated forming of art and language.

Through recentring, or decentring the ‘I,’ a lack of singularity is revealed. Poetry can help reframe the subject and object, to rethink power dynamics not only through perspective, but also through attentiveness. The poetics of care turn us towards reciprocity, an immersion which cultivates compassion and a delicacy in acknowledging individual parts, or selves, as forming, and inseparable from, the whole. Everything can exist within this space. Various roots and identities are threaded into a creation, which is made present by the reader and receiver. We are at play with the possibilities of poetry. Hindu theology resonates this idea with the concept of divine play, or lila, which opens up the world as a place of continuous creation without ends of goals. The westernised concept of ownership and certainty through setting end orientated framework is destablisied here. Poetry invites a space of creative enjoyment, pleasure and play.

We can take both liberty and responsibility with the language used to craft our surroundings. Natural, ecological processes are modelled when we are able to pay closer attention to our interconnected interactions as mirrored in the woven ecosystem of poetics. The word shifts the world. Our culture, our collective consciousness, is shaped by language. Recognising this can give permission to dismantle, or uproot, preexisting structures which fail to serve a society based on respecting interconnected harmony. Seeing as points of origin are multifarious, and creation stems from a dance of chaos, we may well begin here. With the world as the world, the creation as the creature. And thus, an ecosystem exists to hold poetry, and to play with it.