One of the coolest things I've done as a poet was a reading a few years back at the Field Museum, one of my favorite spots in the city. A place that was sort of responsible, via an opportune 9th grade field trip, for making me intent on living in this city one day, where I've now lived longer here than not here. The task laid out by the museums poet in residence was simple. I would spend some time at the museum, with back area access to any collections I wanted. The goal was writing poems I would then present at a reading at my choice of spot in the museum later in the year. August found me wandering the museum for a few hours each week..all my favorite exhibits and some new ones. Not only did I get free admission (though I tended to go on free Wednesdays anyway) but it was also paid and funded by the Poetry Foundation, which at the time, amid some tight money surrounding my move out of the studio, was a godsend.
The results of those weeks at the museum were a series of poems, with a handful of photographs, that became a zine eventually after the reading, which was held in the Hall of Birds one October afternoon. It seemed completely natural, being a poet who once wrote a whole book called IN THE BIRD MUSEUM. The thing that stood out was that this wasn't really an audience of other poets as per usual, but random passersby and museum staffers, all whom asked some really interesting questions after I was finished with the poems. Did I consider myself a nature poet? What role did the midwest play in my work? It was definitely was one of those creative highs, and its strange to think that was actually my last in person reading before covid (I've done a few via zoom over the past four years, but nothing in the flesh yet again.)
Making notes and drafting the poems, I vowed not to dwell on birds (difficult for me) but to focus more on evolution and extinction. The markers in the evolution exhibit kept reminding us of massive wipeouts of creatures due to whatever reason., huge die offs of species. But more the idea of evolution to survive difficult environments. I feel like the last decade the world is a difficult environment, as is life sometimes, so we must adapt and change to survive.
You can read the whole zine HERE, including the photos I took that summer in the museum tucked in among the poems.
