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Explore poems read by the two authors in conversation with each other, then follow your own fish to unlock your own creativity, and share it with us.
Hello. Deborah Backel Schmidt and Sue Boudreaux here, your Follow A Fish poetry conversation and inspiration podcast hosts. We've been friends and neighbors for ages, and now we're enjoying the deep conversations of being poetry podcast pals. Every episode concludes with a prompt to inspire you to write and send something in. Yesterday, we read two reader poems written to the prompt fish from our first episodes, and Deborah's poem in the season of crows.
Deborah:Today, it's my turn to read Ravens against Fate and have a chat with Deborah about it, who's going to be grilling me with comments and questions. This poem, by the way, is published in a book, Nature Light and Dark, by me, Suboudreaux. The link will be in the show notes. And finally, there'll be a little science behind the crows and ravens, part of the genus Corbidae. If you only want poetry, there will be a content warning for you to switch off.
Deborah:But why? The poetry of science, the allegory is just so fascinating and beautiful. Ravens against fate. Ravens stand watch over us, blending into ordinary mornings, taking seriously their sentinel job in between gossiping and jostling along the balding branches of pine trees tilting over the busy road. A senior raven with ragged feathers cocks a beady eye at me, belying an intellect and consciousness, unsuccessfully hiding hidden depths of calculated naughtiness.
Deborah:He'll steal your keys for the challenge and fun of winding you up and letting you run. Ravens recognize me every morning balancing coffee cup, bags, and books, and keys, bundling everything into the tiny car. Perhaps if they like me, they might reset the random circumstances that will lead to a tragic accident, or maybe not. Ravens have their awkward claws on the levers of causal chains. It's almost certain that they have unknowable aims from nature's point of view.
Deborah:Oh, the playfulness of this poem really appeals to me, Sue. You embrace the anthropomorphic. Your ravens take seriously their sentinel job. They gossip, and they plan their mischief in advance. Yet at the same time, you hint at the birds' alliance with darker powers.
Sue:They may blend, quote, into ordinary mornings, end quote, but they have, quote, their awkward claws on the levers of causal chains. How did your fascination with crows and ravens begin?
Sue:You know, I think it was probably when you were talking yesterday about the myths, and especially about Odin, I think some of those have sort of seeped into my subconscious, and I've always looked at sort of scientific stuff and nature with a view to allegory about what it's trying to teach me. And the idea that something dark watching us, something unseen is watching us, it feels like a fairly basic, almost instinct. And they actually watch. You Oh can see them looking at you with a cocked head from the wires or wherever.
Deborah:So you have a scientific background. How do you square this with an anthropomorphic approach in a poem?
Sue:Well, I'm doing some graduate studies right now, and there is this very interesting tension between feeling and science and human behaviour and attitudes, and it turns out that giving people a scientifically argued, closely referenced argument is not persuasive in getting people to change behaviors or changing their attitudes. And I'm the same, I'm just a person, even though I've got a science background. And the way that I would teach kids was very much about well, because what you feel is what you remember. Yes. And I'm that way too.
Sue:And giving that little bit of playfulness in amongst what can feel like fairly dry facts, I think makes them more memorable. And I just did some research on the effect of stories, on people's life long habits that are pro environmental habits.
Sue:And it turns out that there was, amongst almost everything else, that that was a clear link, that if they had personified stories of nature that were important to them as children, that it actually had a lifelong effect.
Deborah:Wow, I'd love to see
Sue:that so much. I was just so, I don't know, thrilled to find that out, and yet it makes total total sense. And I'm very much got one foot in each side. You know, find it quite difficult to write purely academic articles, which I'm being forced to do, it's a good discipline, but I'm constantly wanting to take a look at what messages is nature trying to give us.
Deborah:Yes, wonderful. Well that really leads into my follow-up question, which was going to be, as we humans struggle to redefine a healthier place for ourselves in the natural world, how does anthropomorphism play a part? And I think, well, I think you were answering that, because this study, which I'd love to get a hold of, just sounds like proof that we need those stories.
Sue:Well, don't know that it's proof, because I had a sample size of about 30 people. But it's one of those things. It's like a pilot study. There's a fair amount of research to back up that what you feel is what you remember, what you feel is what will affect your attitudes and your attitudes affect what you do. So I can certainly put a link to that study and that study was done as a graduate project, but it has a bunch of references in it.
Deborah:Very cool. Very cool. And I'm also thinking about the indigenous worldview, and how we really are needing to learn from the people who occupied this land first. And that is one of the key directions we can take, I think, to come into a more healthy relationship with the balance of the world. And the indigenous people had all their gorgeous stories about the character of Coyote and the character of Raven.
Deborah:And these are really meaningful for children growing up from the very moment you hear your first story as a little tiny child to become a part of who you are in the world and how you perceive the world.
Sue:There's an inherent wisdom in those stories, because if you tell stories of personified nature, even if it's a river who becomes a goddess, it's much more difficult to do harm to that river. Yes. And that's something that indigenous wisdom should be teaching us. And the good news is that conservationists are now working very closely with people who actually live in and amongst the animals. Because if you think about it, having white people go into, I don't know, Botswana and telling people, Hey, you should be doing this to conserve your elephants.
Sue:And people in Botswana are like, Who the heck are you? To tell us. And the other thing is that if you're looking at like rhino conservation, the people who poach the rhinos will be hired by cartels or by, I don't know, people trying to sell horn for Chinese medicine, but they're going to be your uncle, or your dad, or your brother, because they're the people who know where the rhinos are. So if you involve local people in conservation, they will have a vested interest in doing it. So, you know, again, conservation is where things are going, because desperate people do desperate things.
Sue:So, you know, the overlap of poetry to change the world along with science, of feeling along with evidence, these things, I hope, can help to save the world.
Deborah:Yes. Beautifully said, Sue. So one last question. We've talked about how ravens and crows play a role in myths and legends from around the world. What do you think it is about them that leads us to ascribe such powers to them?
Sue:I think because they're very relatable. I mean, the way that they look at you, it's like the shimmer of this thin curtain between species thins. And because they're around a lot, and they're a tiny reminder of nature around even in fairly urban settings, because crows particularly will live in urban settings. And their intelligence, you know, all of those things make them very relatable.
Deborah:Yeah, definitely. Wonderful. Well, I'm going to reread this poem of Sue's Ravens Against Fate. Ravens stand watch over us, blending into ordinary mornings, taking seriously their sentinel job in between gossiping and jostling along the balding branches of pine trees tilting over the busy road. A senior raven with raggedy feathers cocks a beady eye at me, belying an intellect and consciousness, unsuccessfully hiding depths of calculated naughtiness.
Deborah:He'll steal your keys for the challenge and fun of winding you up and letting you run. Ravens recognize me every morning, bouncing coffee cup bags and books and keys, bundling everything into the tiny car. Perhaps if they like me, they might reset the random circumstances that will lead to a tragic accident, or maybe not. Ravens have their awkward claws on the levers of causal chains. It's almost certain that they have unknowable aims from nature's point of view.
Sue:So today's prompt is ravens, crows and blackbirds. What do these birds represent to you? What do they make you feel? Maybe some random fact that startles you. So put on the timer for, I don't know, ten minutes, so you don't overwhelm yourself, and write to the prompt.
Sue:Again, all words are welcome. But then go back and edit. Send in your work to catpodcasts@gmail.com, and you too could have your work read out to our massive, growing global audience, poetic license here, which you can help us grow by sharing, subscribing, and badgering your friends to listen. And here is your content warning. This is the natural history of crows and ravens, and it's a bit more scientific.
Sue:Crows, as you probably know, are omnivores. They can nest in all kinds of strange places and will eat almost anything, including natural wildlife, roadkill, leftover KFC, which is by the way a big favourite for most urban wildlife, and other stuff in garbage cans. They also eat agricultural and garden pests, so they're a needed part of the ecosystem and helpful to us by reducing pests and carrion. They are all very well adapted to human altered landscapes and to us. There are stories of crows who befriend people, and they can work around all kinds of problems.
Sue:They can plan ahead, get treats out of very complex puzzles that I would honestly be stumped by. If I really wanted a chunk of raw meat, that is. Some researchers, by the way, get paid to do this very fun kind of animal behavior study. There's links to the crazy cool YouTubes of this in the show notes. Ravens, though, are not just bigger, meatier crows.
Sue:They are a different species, but in the same family of birds. There's a compare and contrast picture in the show notes. Ravens are also intelligent generalists who tend to live in more wild areas. Think retreating to the dark mountains, wizards swirling them around with their great staffs under the gathering storm oh, sorry. Science.
Sue:Ravens live in family groups, not big flocks of crows called entertainingly a murder of crows. Crows will sometimes gang up and bully ravens out of crow territory. Ravens, you've been warned. Maybe invite the crows over to a murder mystery raven. Crews and ravens are in the Corbett family, and you may have noticed the resemblance to other members of this intelligent genus of birds.
Sue:Actually, I think it's a family of birds. The Corbids include jays and magpies, some of which can also use tools and recognize themselves in a mirror, unlike bluebirds who will peck the heck out of a wing mirror as they attack their rival while crapping all over your car door. Scary fact to the poem shared, crows remember faces and probably remember your exact car if and if you have been kind or cruel to them. If kind, they can form friendships with you. But crows have been shown to pass down knowledge of bad guys to their babies, according to a scientific study which I think was done at the University of Washington.
Sue:Details in the show notes. You have been warned. Be nice to crows. And while ravens look super cool, they are very messy pets. Ask the bee feeders at the Tower Of London who keep ravens to spookify the tower.
Sue:Check out My Life with Ravens at the Tower Of London. It's a book linked in the show notes and a great read. Oh, cool. And of course, ravens are heavily featured in many legends, which Deborah has talked about earlier on in our our pair of podcasts, in myths and indigenous stories in a wide variety of cultures. Stories of personified nature, as I'd mentioned before, from the point of view of a nature or an animal, is a particularly powerful way of influencing people's attitudes and behaviors towards nature.
Sue:This is science based, and a reference is also in the show notes. Thank you so much for listening. The music is composed by John Partridge and played by him and Deborah on the flute. Production and editing by me, Sue Boudreaux, in El So Bronto, California.