Tag: Field notes

Activism, environmental reflections, Field notes

On Losing Power: Reflections on Generational Sadness

I realize, perhaps not unlike my neighbours, the edges of my mind are afraid of the quiet, like the way my body jangles just before a plunge into cold water. As if to enter into that silence will be a shock, a jolt from which any reasonable skin would recoil. If I let myself enter the silence–the way that sometimes, last night for example, I just let myself go to sleep when I lie down, instead of trying to read or to write, to prolong the day, finish my tea, stay unconsciousness just a little bit longer–what will I find there? Continue reading On Losing Power: Reflections on Generational Sadness

Unknown's avatarKarin Cope2 Comments
environmental reflections, Field notes, from the archive, photography, poetry, sonnets

Sounds of things you cannot hear

This poem–really an exercise–was suggested by what seemed to me to be a found poem in Richard Louv’s Last Child in the Woods (2008).  In explaining “why the young (and the rest of us) need nature,” and what he means by “coming to our senses,” Louv recounts a game played by Janet Fout, an environmental activist, with her daughter Julia. “As they wandered through the woods, they would listen for ‘the sounds they could not hear.'” Continue reading Sounds of things you cannot hear

Unknown's avatarKarin CopeLeave a comment
Field notes, nightwatches, voyages

Nightwatch #2 (on boredom)

Everything I know about the sea and sailing I have learned from and with Marike. She does not speak in this piece, but, as in Nightwatch #1, is everywhere implied. Beneath the sound of the waves and the wind in the sails and the hum of the engine I am listening for her breath, for the sound of her stirring. I move quietly in the dark hours, so as to let her rest, every hour logging our position on paper so that should something go wrong with the power systems on the boat, we know (more or less) where we are. She does likewise as I am sleeping, sailing sailing sailing into the light. Continue reading Nightwatch #2 (on boredom)

Unknown's avatarKarin CopeLeave a comment
Field notes, nightwatches, voyages

Nightwatch #1 (on demons and ghosts)

Night or day, when at sea we are always on watch, Marike and I.

She is the skipper, the one who oversees and takes charge of the whole vessel–without her there would be neither vessel nor voyage–and I navigator and cook, but we make all of the important decisions about what to do on a passage together, including how and when to spell each other off. Continue reading Nightwatch #1 (on demons and ghosts)

Unknown's avatarKarin CopeLeave a comment
Covidious-notes from isolation, environmental reflections, Field notes, photography, poetry, sonnets

Into the thrill

We walk in the rain at dusk along /a broken black road frogs chanting/in the ditches…

This poem is one of a series of shortened sonnets, in which I test what happens if I compress the sonnet into 13 rather than 14 lines. It feels as if, sometimes, hurry is what happens–the poem dashes off, like a dog into the night. Continue reading Into the thrill

Unknown's avatarKarin CopeLeave a comment
Covidious-notes from isolation, environmental reflections, Field notes, nightwatches, the interpretation of dreams

On feelings of profound loss

I often feel these days as if I am losing my mind. It has something to do with the gravity of the news. And a sense of physical exhaustion so profound that one afternoon, while out for a walk, I stop, curl into a ball in a warm spot on a neighbour’s porch and sleep in the sun for half an hour. Continue reading On feelings of profound loss

Unknown's avatarKarin CopeLeave a comment
Covidious-notes from isolation, environmental reflections, Field notes, histories, nightwatches, short stories, the interpretation of dreams

A valediction forbidding mourning (a more or less true history of the present)

Over the course of the last week everything has changed radically. In the northern hemisphere winter has officially become spring. We’ve shifted from an eerie quiet, as if collectively in Canada we were kneeling, our ears pressed to the tracks of time listening for the train of the future to come barrelling upon us, to something still more unearthly. Early closures, slow stunned walks in the sun and recommendations about how we ought to behave have become, over the course of several days, a state of emergency and civilian lockdown. Continue reading A valediction forbidding mourning (a more or less true history of the present)

Unknown's avatarKarin Cope2 Comments