NOVEMBER FEATURED POET

Welcome to the 11th Wolf Twin Review!

Introducing: Beth Surdut . . . Tucson Festival of Books Literary Award winner, storyteller, visual artist, environmental educator, and creature whisperer.

Portrait by: Tré

Tricksters

In the seasons of drought

Virga walks across the sky

Never slaking our thirst

The only water, our tears.

 

In the Galisteo Basin

A man poked his walking stick

Into the desert’s body.

A parlor trick, I thought.

 

Then he waved his wand

Wet with the lifeblood hiding

Under the desert’s dry skin

Like hope in desperate times.

 

Raven, that old Trickster,

Dipped into the windmill trough,

And mimicked perfectly

The sound of bubbles rising.

Having Tasted Joy

I’d heard of otters 

In these rivers

By the salted sea

But prophets know

Belief and actuality

Sometimes entwine

Like water weeds distracting

From the peaceful swim

Of your good intentions

 

Over the crusted bridge

Down the muddy path

Under arched limbs

Through rust-tipped grasses

Tempted by each overgrown path

I glimpsed the swift river

Wavelets glittering

No otters in my sight

 

Movement, on the far bank

Tule and sedge rustling

Deep in giant bullrushes

An otter’s head rose up

And then another

I said I would not leave

Until I saw an otter

But having tasted joy

I know I must return.

Listening to Raven

The wind comes up cold in August

Coyotes bark in the valley

I sit on the mountain

Raven wings brushing my hair.

 

Pay attention to me, says

Raven.

I will. Tomorrow.

Right now, I’m distracted

Tied up. Tied down.

 

Raven sits in the juniper

Watching me as I draw him.

Looking at me

He swoops in to untie a knot.

 

He talks to me every day.

Light glancing off his feathers

Six drawings later

My eyes are reflected in his.

 

As I walk in the desert morning

Raven lands in front me

Listen, he says

And finally, I do.

Featured Poet Interview:

1. Though we have our favorite poets, how important is it for writers to find their unique voice and pave their own path?

I'm the only one who can delve into my heart, mind, and spirit to conceive and create what I do, as are you, so my approach is to learn the basics, then experiment. If I don’t know the rules, I don’t have to worry about breaking them. Especially when I am working on a particular project, I try to stay clear of anything already made that might subconsciously influence me, lodge in my brain, and color what I am doing. I have never wanted to be someone else, but when my work or my way of being sparks someone to associate me with artists and writers I admire, I am delighted.

2. Can you describe what it’s like when you create?

I have ongoing internal conversations and have always experienced what I call waking dreams as well as lucid dreams. I carry my ideas around with me, so when I write, the act of doing so appears spontaneous even though I've been having the conversation for a long time . . . or not. Sometimes ideas arrive fully developed, in response to a trigger.

When I'm working on a visual piece, I enter an alternate zone—a higher plane. Everything else falls away and I feel as if the top of my head opens up, and prismatic light from the universe pours in and flows down my right arm and into my hand. In part because I work in such detail, or if I’m creating a healing scarf, I have to be completely immersed, so that when I step back and look at what I've created, I am always a bit surprised that I made that.

3. Artistically, you wear many hats. Is there a medium or material you haven't been able to work with yet that calls to you?

There are always possibilities, including carving transformation masks, but right now, publishing my illustrated books are my primary projects. My list of things I’d like to do is always growing, so I used to hope for reincarnation as a human. But when I watch young ravens coasting together on the breezes in the vast Southwestern sky, I would readily trade my human self to be one of them.

4. Your poetry is not simply from the perspective of an observer—it often reads like a beautiful conversation. Though full of delightful curiosity, your poems also speak of deep interconnection, of sensitivity, and experiential wisdom. Which makes one wonder: how precocious were you as a child?

Self-directed and independent, I was an alternative learner lucky to have parents who said yes whenever I asked to learn a new skill, which was far more interesting to me than acquiring things. I have no memories of age-appropriate traditional children's books and had no interest in dolls. I learned how to tell time long after other kids, and still don’t have much of a relationship with linear time. My father gave me my first salamander, The Annotated Alice, and a Webster's Unabridged dictionary. His idea of a children's book was to write and illustrate one for me when I was five. It was about a little alligator who wasn't accepted by other gators, but he had turtle friends who would nap in the shadow of his long jaw. The little gator, who cried purple tears when he was sad, eventually found his place in the gator colony when, with the help of a huge old granddaddy gator, he discovered his true talents. Maybe that’s why I was so comfortable paddling with alligators for three years.

5. Do you feel more inspired when in nature or indoors?

Just as my work and play intertwine, I set no parameters to inspiration. My imagination is within me. That said, you will always find me near windows, preferably open ones, if I am indoors.

6. Can you share with us your top three books of poetry?

I tend toward individual poems rather than entire books, and even that is a challenge.  Jabberwocky was the first poem I ever memorized and I still respond to situations with lines from it. I grew up in a household where our everyday conversations were spiced with quotes from Shakespeare, Ogden Nash, and Lewis Carroll. All of them will get you through situations with their wit, but now what resonates most often is Mary Oliver's poems. The year she died, I had the honor of representing her at an In Memoriam reading at the University of Arizona Poetry Center. Death had been so greedy for poets that year that I was allowed only one poem, which was achingly difficult to choose between The Summer Day:

 

I don't know exactly what a prayer is.

I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down

into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,

how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,

which is what I have been doing all day.

Tell me, what else should I have done?

Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?

 

Or When Death Comes:

 

When it's over, I want to say: all my life

I was a bride married to amazement.

I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

 

When it's over, I don't want to wonder

if I have made of my life something particular, and real.

I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened,

or full of argument.

 

I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.

 

Opening Oliver’s collection Devotions in the morning before checking news of daily disasters is both a reminder of the singular beauty of the world and an antidote to the general disregard of it. 

If I want it darker, I turn to Leonard Cohen, who has traveled with me more times than I realized until he died. His poem I Came So Far For Beauty has manifested in a painting I will never sell. When an artist asked me to be the model for a drawing Joan of Arc, I said yes because she knew Cohen’s interpretation. Talking about Cohen to you would take up more thought, time, and space than we have here.

7. I love that you aren’t bound by a process. When you want to create, you just do it. Is this also how you approach life?

Yes! Being willing to explore and expand has always been part of me. Many of the projects I've done began with the questions of me saying "What if" or a potential client asking "Can you." It is not unusual for me to say yes and then figure out how to make the concept a reality.

 

I'm not a thrill-seeker looking for the edge of danger. I am a collector of experiences that combine body and spirit. The mysterious longing for beautiful places has guided my life. Ever drawn to wild places—grand and intimate—I have hung from a rope in a mountain fern forest, piloted a small plane over the Atlantic ocean, climbed a mountain to bathe in a holy Hindu spring, kayaked amidst seals and dolphins, listened to whales, and spent the best part of three years canoeing a wild and scenic river side-by-side with the aforementioned alligators.

8. You were summoned to the Southwest United States in 2008 by one of my favorite birds: the Raven. In your experience, what inspiring insights can you share about Corvids?

The short answer is that when people bring me their true stories about their interactions with ravens, many of them talk about clever and playful behavior, which is not surprising considering their brain-to-body ratio is comparable to that of a chimpanzee. What led me to create Listening to Raven were folks who had never met each other bringing me stories about the Raven being a comfort after someone died. This was new and the opposite of the dark tales of Raven’s foreboding association with death and sorrow. I had not found these comfort stories in any folk tales or creation mythology—though there are many of Raven’s actions ultimately benefitting humans—which means the perception of comforter was not subliminally pre-programmed. I am particularly fascinated with that aspect of the bird that became my spirit guide.

9. What is your happy place?

For the past year, much that defines my happiness is my extraordinary relationship with a wild roadrunner, who comes to find me, waits for me to join him outside, and often stays close to me. We met when I began singing to him, and Roadie and I recently celebrated our one-year anniversary by the bird jumping into my lap. We are quite companionable, and sit together for hours.

10. Which creatures do you think are unfairly portrayed in our myth, folklore, media, and culture? And how does one cast off those stereotypes to observe them with compassion?

Often creatures with bad reputations, either socially or mythologically, include reptiles, insects, rodents, and bats. But it depends who is telling the tale. Ravens and owls are seen in some cultures as harbingers of death or other bad news, yet in others, for example, Raven and Spider are central figures in creation stories.

 

Beings equipped with venom, sharp teeth, claws, or stingers, whether used to hunt food or in defense when threatened, are often portrayed as aggressive, yet we talk about passionately fighting tooth and nail for something.  

 

When I foster Art of Paying Attention to Nature workshops, I ask people, "What critter frightens you? Why? What do you actually know about the lives of these animals?"

 

Sometimes the reason is an encounter that is up close, very personal, and is often a surprise in which we feel we don’t have control—the woman who told me she woke up in bed with a wolf spider crawling on her face; the otherwise tough ex-Marine reliving the time when he was a kid and his older brother dropped a wriggling garter snake down the back of his shirt.

 

Learning about the lifestyles of the animals and taking the element of surprise away is a good place to start. When I realized I'd been shopping with a lizard in my pants, I knew enough to recognize what it was, and was most interested in figuring out what kind of lizard was shimmying under my jeans. I was intent on not damaging it, and releasing it someplace safe. Had it been a scorpion, you can bet I would have immediately dropped my pants in the parking lot.

11. You have stated that the road to empathy begins with listening. Modern life presents a myriad of impediments to this. What is a good first step in enabling oneself to get prepared to listen?

Imagine that you have the characteristics of whoever or whatever you are focusing on. That has served me well with humans and other animals. Listen, but also try to be. For example, ever since I was a child, I imagine what it's like to be in an animal's body, including ones hit by cars, or in the clutches of a predator, which as an empath, is really frightening. When I see a lizard drink, or a bird sending up sprays of water as it bathes, in that instant, I experience those moments of sustenance. I am emptied of the incessant chatter of modern life and am filled with joy.

Stay curious and open to possibilities, but also be selective. Pay attention to what truly engages you and eventually enlightens you. Paying attention brings care, care brings love, and love engenders protection.

12. If you were a tree, which would you be?

My immediate reaction is that I wouldn't be a tree. Having led a peripatetic and adventurous life so far, I've never entertained the idea of being rooted forever in one place, though if that were to happen, I would produce luscious flowers, a seductive scent, and a tart fruit that is a hybrid of orange and lemon—l would be the Meyer lemon tree. I could look forward to the stories and interactions that could come to me from the creatures building nests or running through my branches, unintimidated by my presence. Even stationed in one place, there would be news communicated through my root system as well as from migratory birds and pollinators. Though that would likely cause me to yearn to see the world, so I am back to not wanting to be a tree.

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To Beth:

Thank you so much for being our Featured Poet and inviting us into your wonderful world. It is a pleasure to say:

Welcome to the Wolf Pack!

Dearest Readers:

Greetings, fellow poetry lovers. Thank you for your continued support of the literary arts! Check back next month, or subscribe to our blog to see the moonstruck poets we have lined up. Owwwoooooo!

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