Christine Lowther’s collection of descriptive poems, My Nature, is a collection well-suited to lovers of nature poetry, composed of aspects of the environment the poet is immersed in, as well as aspects of the poet — a wiccan, an anti-urbanite who is most content at home amidst scenic wilderness. In “Trauma Remedy for Travelers” she takes a rock with her when she travels, a reminder of one piece of Earth preferred over any other.
While the poet rails against labels such as ‘nature-girl’ and ‘nature-lover’ (in “Natural Deaths”) she certainly appears to be one. Viewing bug bites favourably as the pinpricks of life and stating: To be known and healed by rock: is this the ultimate love? / I myself have walked away/ with goofy grin glued to my face / as if I’d just gotten laid. In “Say the Names” she says she will risk cliché — a risk she is certainly willing to take.
Another hint at the author’s intention with her collection appears in “Lunch Break”: I love poetry I can understand. Poems don’t need to be purely descriptive to be accessible though, and while easily understood, some poems in the collection lack deeper insight; this could be accomplished without over-intellectualism, by moving beyond sensory representation, and through the inclusion of surprising associations which prompt the reader to view the world through the poet’s eyes. This is accomplished in some of My Nature’s most memorable moments, which favour narrative, commentary and facts. Like the liquid commas of the squid in “Mushroom Dream Time,” and the 120 million-years’ mixture /Of mudstone, argillite, and chert in “Outcrop Island/Ts’ix-wat-sats”.
Many of the poems consist of observations on the sights and sounds of a cottage scene, the beauty of the sky, rocks, mud, waters and creatures. One of the more noteworthy examples of this was “Some of the Many things you Missed”:
Pulsating full-bellied yet diaphanous moon jellies/ Blue-tinged with four pink gonads / their only colour not brains but genitals …/ Lighting up the bay / their surface-bobbing like visual morse code
I reveled in the moments that nature was more Lowther’s own, instances that were clever, less predictable and expressive of the author’s personality. Though at times, just as a poem starts to work in this way, it tapers off, ending with lines or images that are less resonant. For example, in the brief poem “Minutia”:
A birder advises ‘Let nature take its course.’ Cats aren’t exactly natural. We bred them into existence, / and they toy with their prey. / Don’t wish this on the little sparrow that hops / away twittering, one wing low to the ground.
This is much sharper than the stanza that follows, ending with:
tender, defenseless / as my heart.
There is some redundancy in the collection — ideas summed up more succinctly in some poems than in lengthier ones that express the same sentiment. For example, the description of a scar as a mark of cool in “The Aunt from the Island” versus the whole poem on scars “Leave a Mark.” Certain poems might have more impact and set the rest of the collection up better, were they to appear earlier on, for example, “Seventh Grade,” which offers a glimpse at the poet’s early rejection of society, seeking refuge in nature to escape harassment by her peers.
I would argue that the real strength in this collection lies in the humanity in the minority of these poems, rather than the nature in the majority. The most successful poems in the collection appear in a cluster in the last 10 pages of My Nature. These unexpected scenes reveal most about the character’s core and as such, are most compelling. For example the dialogue on aging between the body and mind in “Tempering the Mind”:
The wisdom of the body made reticent / by the mechanics of the mind… / Mind: what will you do when you quit / What will I do when you quit?
Other notable pieces in this section also deal with insecurities related to age like “Cougar Night at the Climbing Gym” — a poem that situates the narrator with two young men, and flows well from one association to the other:
One of them looks like George Michael from Wham, / the high layered blonde hair. This is called the frog, he says, limbs splayed / over his shiny wall. He seems more of a salamander …
I am older to him / But bedded his friend just two nights ago. / These things happen. /
Still a tad scandalized / when I snooped over my therapist’s shoulder / and saw her note. Cougar and likes it.
I was also taken by “Biodegrading” – a piece that parallels the poet’s disintegrating home in need of work, with herself:
Backache: Maybe I’ll put this off. But fear / of that spectre neglect stiffens resolve.
And ending with :
The garden and I, we age together folding / back into falling, a forced letting go/ releasing of grip
These poems that focus on the poet’s human nature are warmer because the narrator is more real and relatable, rather than a step above the rest of us non-understanders who don’t appreciate nature the same way she does, as set up in poems like “To a Shore Pine” we see more clearly than others — which seems presumptive.
“Cougar Night at the Climbing Gym” along with two poems that stand out as incongruent with the character we see in the other poems, (an attendee of a punk show “This town is a Punk Rock Desert” and glued to laptop screen watching vampires in “Summer Solstice”) brings me to a contrast that would be interesting to see furthered — the poet’s relation to the modern world. We see little of this, perhaps as a sort of denial, but the idea of a forced letting go of the conventions of modernity is interesting, and this dichotomy would be a more subtle way of emphasizing the poet’s love of nature. She moves in this direction with her uncommonly unromantic descriptions of her travels in Europe – in “Always the reluctant Traveler”— How do you say how do I get out In Italian? More thoughts on urban settings and her decision to leave them behind in favor of the wild would benefit My Nature. This discord would give the reader a better sense of the poet’s rejection of civilization, and enforce and justify her strong emotions.
LISA SOOKRAJ 