Various Instructions for the Practice of Poetic Field Research

Abstract

Various Instructions for the Practice of Poetic Field Research Eric Magrane (bio) 1. Note your elevation above sea level. What poems occur here? 2. Map the quarter-mile radius around your home in a poem. 3. Draw a line. On one side of the line, note observations. On the other side, write responses to those observations. Which is which? 4. Choose an object in your field. Make the object the title. Make it the title three times. Write three pieces with this title. 5. List everything that is alive around you. List everything that is not alive around you. 6. Go to a different elevation. What poems occur here? 7. Choose a species you know little about but that lives in your ecosystem. Learn everything you can about that species. Then go find the species. Write what happens. 8. The first object-poem (see 4) will be your control. Analyze the second and third poems against the control. What are your conclusions? 9. Find an urban ecotone. Stand there. Write a poem from the dual space. 10. Imagine a rise in sea level. How will that affect your elevation poems? 11. List everything that is natural around you. List everything that is not natural around you. [End Page 7] 12. Observe the lists you made for 5 and 11. Why did you organize them as you did? 13. Stand up and put your arms out. The length of your arms is the circle of the poem. 14. Choose a field you know little about. Find someone in that field to interview. Research the person's work beforehand, so that you can ask relevant questions. Conduct the interview, and then write a poem. 15. Write a poem that takes place over 4.5 billion years. 16. Write a poem that is 1.5 degrees Celsius warmer than it is now. [End Page 8] Eric Magrane ERIC MAGRANE is an assistant professor of geography at New Mexico State University. He is the editor, with Christopher Cokinos, of The Sonoran Desert: A Literary Field Guide, from the University of Arizona Press, and, with Linda Russo, Craig Santos Perez, and Sarah de Leeuw, of Geopoetics in Practice, forthcoming from Routledge. Copyright © 2019 University of North Carolina Wilmington