Wiawaka Lecture Series: Bernice Mennis Lecture

This talk will explore poetry (and all the arts) and our natural world as “revolutionary”–a force against dogma and fundamentalism, against linear, and binary thinking, against the the pull of speed and efficiency.  Poetry and Nature are the language of the senses, of ambiguity, paradox, and biodiversity, of the slow and layered, of dialogue, complexity, contradiction, interconnection, a language which allows us to traverse restrictive boundaries and explore deeper levels within us and within our world.  We all move between different realms.  Synesthesia, which I will  mention briefly, is one way of traveling.  It is when one sense–sight or small or sound–triggers another sense–an almost blending of senses that happens in poetry, with the visual arts, and in nature.  It is. I think, common in our childhood, before “socialization.”