In Conversation with David Crews
In the fall of 2020 I connected with David, now Wild Northeast’s managing editor, to talk about his work on Writing the Land—a new project and series of poems forthcoming this year. We also spoke of the general relationship of writing and art to the land, conservation, and activism.
Birch Malotky / editor
BIRCH: Okay, so first question I have for you is, what is Writing the Land? And how did you get involved?
DAVID: You know, interesting thing is, I've been keeping this journal of all the Writing the Land work. And so in the last few days I wrote a few of your questions down and I was just sort of journaling some ideas. And the first thing I wrote to answer this question was: I'm actually not sure what writing the land is. Which is kind of funny because it's like, you know, here it is: the project we're presenting. Or, what is it? Yeah, I don't know if I can quite explain it.
Over the past summer, I was contacted by an individual named Lis McLoughlin. Lis is an engineer by study. She has a PhD in science, technology, and society. She taught college for a number of years but now she's focused on land advocacy and activism. And she came to me with the vision for this wonderful project idea, asked if I might help her put something together? And I said, yeah, sure I'm in. So all this work came about in just the last few months. She had a vision for it and a process too. But it's definitely still evolving. We're in our pilot year for the project. So again, I don't really think we know exactly what to expect. We're pretty excited though. And it seems like the poets and land trusts involved—they're pretty excited too.
Right now, we are recruiting land trusts who select lands they have specifically preserved and we are pairing poets with those respective places. Artists, of course, have been writing the land for quite some time. But to be in this place and time—with all the ecological and social challenges we face—we hope the project will bring fresh and new perspectives to give voice to the living world. Poets can write about anything they like really, the land is simply the starting point. The project this first year will look something like an online literary journal. But it's also, I think, what we hope will be a sort of community hub that will help build awareness to what it means to preserve and protect land.
BIRCH: I love the way that Writing the Land just evolved out of like minds coming together and making it happen. I'm excited for you. In terms of your work for the project, what was your process for writing these poems?
DAVID: I couldn't help but research the lands before I ever visited them. I imagine every artist works differently. Some poets might have just wanted to go see the land right away. And, you know, let that be a first impression. But I couldn't do that, I'm a Virgo rising. So, that seems to take over intensely in my creative process. I can't not look at the big picture.
BIRCH: It's so funny that you actually say that because I am also a Virgo. One of my professors just told me, “You don't need an alibi to write about something.” You can just write these beautiful stories that don't have to have this bigger picture and like, don't have to have this sort of activist bent to them. And I was like, "You're wrong, no I can't."
DAVID: I can remember a lot of my mentors would want me to get to some spaces in the creative process that were really messy, you know, where I was just sort of like, I don't know, plunging through the woods and bushwhacking the mind, right? But to be honest, I don't know how to not think of a bigger frame for what I'm doing creatively. So, I definitely started researching the names and the lands. Then I visited the places. And then I let the beginning research interact with the actual physical presence.
What surprised me was that a lot of times what I found was not what I expected I would be writing about. So, for example, I started writing the Eagle Mountain poem, and it started off about birds. But then I moved into talking about Thoreau, who is still a sort of hero of mine. His writing is about a mind at work, processing the world around him. I find him relevant as ever. And what's interesting is a lot of his books that we have nowadays—these bird journals, The Maine Woods (which is a book that I have on the road with me here)—they were really just put together posthumously. That, to me, seems very scary. Like if somebody were to take all my journals after I died and just make books out of them, like, what if that's not exactly what I wanted to say?
And so, what happened was this poem started off about birds. And then it became about Thoreau, and then it became about sort of censorship and how we perceive people and writing. But that happens with names, doesn’t it? This past year, for example, I have found myself delving deep into the Indigenous history of the region. We are living on ancestral lands of Native American tribes, many of whom were forcibly and violently removed from their homelands. How does that not affect one’s subject matter when writing about, say, the Kennebec River or Binney Hill Wilderness Preserve?
image / Brett William
BIRCH: So things I'm hearing about what surprised you for each poem are a lot of how engaging with one specific place sort of unexpectedly led you to engaging with an idea about conservation, justice, and land on a larger scale? So how do you think art can contribute to these types of conversations, and does it have a special role to play?
DAVID: I think I would probably argue that the greatest ideal art serves is that it gives voice to those who do not have one. I would argue from a conservation perspective—the biosphere and animals and trees—they cannot speak for themselves. So I think the most important thing art can do is give voice to the biosphere—which needs serious protection and care. By the way, there are a ton of things that need our attention. And there are a ton of things right now from a social perspective that need reform and an equalizing ethos. However, the biosphere, I think, should be up there as one of the more important things we should collectively be putting our attention to. And so I would say art does that.
For myself, personally, I am not looking at the art of dissent as much as I'm looking for the art of discourse. Which I think art can also do. And so, I'm really trying hard these days to stay somewhat positive. To bring in the complicated discussions, but to not make people feel like they should be ashamed for the decisions they make. More people are controlled and beholden to the system than not. And important discussions need to continue. Because the bottom line is—and you see this mostly with our politics, but you see this across so many aspects of society—our country doesn’t talk anymore. It has become so polarized that we all just literally support the TV stations that are spitting out the rhetoric we agree with. And we live in echo chambers.
BIRCH: Yeah, I think a lot about writing in an environmental field, about framing, and how seemingly there's this tension between framing something in a way that makes it approachable versus compromising on ideology in some way—and it's so frustrating. It’s such a fine line to walk. Like I’m trying to use my perspective of someone of privilege, but also of scientific education to write about climate change. But then I get into this thing of like, I'm writing about the changing times of flowers, but there are people whose houses are being burned and they're getting flooded and it feels sort of futile and self-indulgent.
DAVID: Yeah, I understand that. I mean, it's so easy to feel like you're out of touch with what is happening in the world. And yet, if you're not following what it is that you're passionate about and what you're curious about then what else can you do?
BIRCH: Yeah, I don't know. I think that where I've come to is that writing is my craft and the environment and ecosystem function is what keeps me up at night and so there I have my topic and my tool and, you know, that's it.
DAVID: May I share a little anecdote that I think might speak to that—with the way you just described? In the last couple of years I've been through a lot, personally. And I was just starting to feel overwhelmed. And my sister gifted me this astrology reading and the reader (Stephanie) goes, "David, you know what you need more than anything right now?" …and I'm waiting for some huge mystery to fall upon me from the stars. And I'm listening. And she goes, "You need to learn how to love yourself." That’s it. I was like, holy shit, I know. Like, I know you're right. I'm trying, I want to love who I am. And it's a journey, man. It is a fucking journey.
And then she said, "The world is really strange right now, and it's going to be weird for a little while." She goes, "But I want to let you know, you don't have to do anything. There are really smart people out there, capable people, who are going to take care of things. And you don't need to worry about doing something." And I’ve got to tell you, Birch, for years I've been feeling this existential angst about the environment, building and building, and I've been writing as an outlet but it hasn't been enough. It has still been building in me. And when she said that I felt like somebody literally just ripped open my chest, let me all sort of spill out, and I felt like water. It was unbelievable. And I thought to myself, you know what, I've struggled with this: I'm a white man. I grew up in suburban New Jersey. I've had every opportunity in this world to be successful—the system was literally made for somebody like me. Maybe it's good that I'm taking a backseat right now, maybe I should step back and retreat. Maybe I should focus on learning, focus on reading more, on being quiet and silent and paying attention. Like the way Thoreau wanted us to live deliberately. And I have to say, in the last six months, I've been going through what I might want to call a bit of a spiritual journey. Like, I feel myself on a path.
BIRCH: I think I'm going to definitely mull over that. I mean, part of my initial reaction is like this woman told you there are smart, thoughtful people who are going to do this and make it better and so you don't need to worry about it. But isn't that us? Aren't we the smart thoughtful people who are trying to make it better?
DAVID: You know, maybe. But also I've been trying to get published now for about fifteen years. And I have to say one thing that I've learned in all those years: there are a lot of really amazing writers out there, a lot of really inspiring voices, and a lot of really good poetry being written. And honestly, Birch, I can't say that—as a white, suburban kid from New Jersey—I can't say that my voice is dire and absolutely relevant right now. I can't say with certainty it is. I'd like to think that I have been living a good life and that I have my unique spirit inside me and I would gladly try to give whatever positive energy out into the world that I can give. And I hope I am. I hope I do matter, and I hope my work matters to people. But sometimes I wonder if maybe I should sit back and take a backseat sometimes, you know?
BIRCH: That's awesome. Okay I think I should just leave it at that. And you did ask me to come back to the study of history as it really started in conservation.
DAVID: Yeah, we should be searching for new history. Which is something I'm trying to do right now. Find more voices. I'm trying to read women environmental writers. Trying to read Indigenous writers of ecology, trying to read environmental writers of color. And I’ve found a lot. A lot of the voices who are making their ways into these poems are books and writers I've been reading. And before you asked about activism, like if we should all be obligated to activism…
I've been thinking about this idea that activism may take many forms. I would argue, spending my time reading writers of color and Indigenous writers could be activism. It's not happening perhaps on a social level, I'm not putting out tweets about it. Although, I have. But that to me is interesting: the idea of retreat. In a world where human beings are consuming as much as we consume, altering, even destroying the biosphere in the ways we have—retreat to me is an essential form of activism.
And I've been thinking a lot about change, and I think we are scared. I think this pandemic has people scared because human beings don't like change. And I have been thinking a lot about change out in the biosphere too. Nature is constantly in flux. Things are continually changing, it's evolution. And I feel like there is something to learn from that, because even though people don’t like change, I don't know if our lives will go back to being what they were. I don’t know they should. And so, what I have been thinking a lot about is how this change is complicated and what's my role in it.
My writing mantra over the last year or so has been these three words and you can find them on my website: wilderness, preservation, nonviolence. For me, I want to live a life in which I protect and preserve what's living. And we often times can only protect and preserve what's living when we preserve the ecosystems of living beings. And that's where the wilderness comes in, and wildflowers, and then preservation. The easiest way to get to preservation is to start being nonviolent, and so I am trying to live as much a nonviolent life as I can. It is all about the preservation of life and voice of living beings. That's what matters. Δ
DAVID CREWS is a writer, editor, and wilderness advocate who currently resides in southern Vermont / ancestral lands of Mohican and Abenaki peoples. He cares for work that engages a reconnection to land and place, wilderness, preservation, nonviolence. He serves as managing editor for Wild Northeast. Find David and his work at davidcrewspoetry.com
Writing the Land / writingtheland.org is an attempt to honor nature and our relationship with it in a way that is as equitable and transparent as it is deep and entangled. As poets and advocates, we declare the intention that the scope of the project be as inclusive—to humans and places—as they hope the mantle of protection that land trusts offer can be. Our work in writing the land will never be complete but rather gains strength, depth, beauty, and energy from a multitude of voices.
