Signals in the Anthropocene.

Abstract

Signals in the Anthropocene Adam Dickinson (bio) Anthropogenic pollution is rewriting our climate and the metabolism of our bodies. Chemical, noise, and light pollution, as well as gut microbiomes increasingly tuned to Western diets, have consequences for the hormonal conversations constantly taking place in the endocrine systems of humans and nonhumans. Poetry, as writing most concerned with the limits of writing, is, in my view, well-positioned to respond to these extraordinary acts of inscription, making them legible in ways that might influence prevailing cultural and political conversations around pollution and public health. Situated at the intersection between science and art, my poetic practice integrates creative writing with laboratory-based scientific experiments. My aim is to bring into focus the often inscrutable biological and cultural writing intrinsic to the Anthropocene by responding to the work of art in the work of art—that is, to the metabolic processes of human and nonhuman bodies and their inextricable link to the global metabolism of energy and capital.1 For example, my book Anatomic (Coach House Books, 2018) incorporates the results of chemical and microbial testing on my body. I looked into my blood, urine, and feces, and saw the Anthropocene staring back in the form of persistent organic pollutants and microbial species reflective of a modern, industrialized diet. I wrote about and with what I found. More recently, I have been investigating what it might mean to invite heat into the compositional process in the context of climate change. With laboratory assistance, I raised my internal body temperature by about 1.5°C through a series of heat stress trials that involved cycling on a stationary bicycle in hot and humid conditions (active heating) and wearing a specially designed hot water heated suit for several hours (passive heating). During these trials, I gathered information about changes to my core and skin temperature, blood pressure, brain blood flow, and CO2 uptake. I took cognitive tests at various intervals to measure effects on my memory and response time. I am also currently in the middle of a series of experiments with a [End Page 18] microbiologist, which involve employing a bioreactor that mimics the human colon. Inoculating the bioreactor with a sample of my own gut microbes, I will be looking at the effects of exposures to xenobiotics such as triclosan on the mobilization of antibiotic-resistant genes in my gut. I will also be inducing an "extinction event" in a sample of my own gut flora through the application of strong antibiotics. Following this process, I plan to observe the effects of artificial dyes and artificial sweeteners on the post-antibiotic-treated sample as compared to a control. What kind of microbial landscape, nourished entirely by artificial foods, would emerge in the wake of an antibiotic extinction event? While extreme, these speculative yet scientifically informed experiments engage with the kinds of medical, dietary, and commercial pressures at work in the Anthropocene. My recent poems respond directly and indirectly to these and other experiments. Shifting between microscopic and the macroscopic scales, between the personal and the global, and between procedural and thematic compositional methods, these pieces emerge from experimental protocols, research, and resulting data associated with various experiments. The two poems below respond specifically to antibiotic resistance and heat. "A Pump Is the Dream of Starting Over" is based in part on information I acquired from sequencing my microbiome, which revealed the presence of 45 distinct antibiotic-resistant genes in my gut, including several associated with efflux pumps, which are proteins capable of defensively pumping antibiotics out of bacterial cells. The poem explores the efflux pump in relation to antibiotic resistance acquired by my father during his final days in hospital before succumbing to leukemia, and in relation to the figure and function of pumps more generally as mechanisms for memory and thinking. "Asparagus" is a poem concerned with urine as both a transporter of body heat and as a signal. Urine carries within its warmth the products of the body's metabolic processes. It also carries metabolites that can activate other sense receptors. Asparagus produces a strong odor in the urine of those who consume it, as its volatile sulfurous byproducts evaporate...