August | 2022 | Jerome Gagnon Blog

Ecopoetry:

An Interview with Gail Entrekin, Editor of Canary Literary Magazine

Interviewed by Jerome Gagnon

The rise of ecopoetry during the last several years can be seen in the many publications devoted to the environment. Some of the newer periodicals are Ecotone, Emergence, Terrain, Flyway: A Journal of Writing, About Place , and Canary Literary Magazine. These publications carry on the tradition of reverence for nature found in world literatures and serve as witness to the effects of ecological devastation. One of the best of the on-line journalsis Canary Literary Magazine (www.https://canarylitmagazine.org. Started in 2007, it aims to “deepen awareness of the environment and enrich the well-being of the individual,” according to their home page.

I interviewed Editor Gail Entrekin (via email) to learn what influenced her to found Canary and what advice she would give to writers planning to submit their work. A poet, hiker, teacher, and quilt-maker, Gail earned an M.A. in English Lit/Creative Writing from Ohio State University. She’s also the poetry editor of Hip Pocket Press. She taught English and Creative Writing at Sierra College in Grass Valley and, for many years, worked with California Poets in the Schools, teaching poetry to children. Her books of poetry include The Art of Healing, with her husband, Charles Entrekin (2016), Rearrangement of the Invisible (2012), and Change (2005), which was nominated for the Northern California Book Award.

Q. I’d like to start by saying how in awe I am with the overall work and aesthetics of the magazine. The combination of text and photographs is always very inviting visually. Can you please share with us what motivated you to found Canary?

A. I don’t know. It was the thing that was on my mind at the time. Our area of the world (Nevada City, CA) had been gold mined back in the day and there was mercury in many areas that was damaging the soil and the water supply. We were fighting the powers that be not to dam the beautiful and scenic Yuba River, and the air quality was heading down due to the pollution rising up to us on our mountain from Sacramento down below. The more I learned, the more upsetting it was. So it seemed to me that what I could do to help was small, but perhaps it would help some people to wake up. And if nothing else, it might serve as a reminder of all the beauty, the connection to the natural world that we were betraying and stood to lose.

Q. Please tell us a little bit more about your background and what you find most satisfying about the editing process.

A. I started a local online publication for women first, to showcase and discuss work in progress (Women’s Writing Salon). It was wildly popular and I expanded it into a local reading series in Nevada City, where I was living at the time, Beyond that, I’ve been employed as an editor in one way or another, on and off, for about 40 years. I also run poetry critiquing workshops, and an important aspect of critiquing is noticing how line breaks, word choices, etc. contribute to the success or failure of a poet’s ability to reach their desired goal for the poem. I love, love, love the opportunity to read work by so many talented and passionate, mostly unknown writers that I would not have read otherwise — people leading their own quiet campaigns in their neighborhoods to save a small piece of the planet on their watch.

Q. What have you learned in your tenure as an editor?

A. At this point, the only things I learn are the new ways the language is changing: new pronoun usage, use of back slashes within lines, etc.

Q. Do you believe that Canary has had a concrete impact on environmental/ ecological issues?

A. No, I fear that we’ve had very little direct impact on the crisis at hand. I think most of our readership is already well aware of the loss of habitat and species that we’re experiencing. We circulate Canary to friends and fellow writers, though, and my hope is that someone becomes more aware of what’s happening and is able to have some small impact in their own world.

Q. What advice would you give to writers who are planning to submit their poetry, and how would you describe your editorial style?

A. I guess I’d give the same advice any editor would give: read the magazine before you submit, so you understand what kind of work we publish. Be sure to read our mission statement on our home page so you understand what we’re trying to accomplish. I never change anything larger than a comma or a spelling error without letting the author know what I’m doing. If I do more than that, I send them my edited version for approval. Poets are especially interested in the formatting of their poems and they don’t take well to unauthorized changes.

Q. Your mission statement says that the theme of the magazine is “the environmental crises and the losses of species and habitat.” Can you give us an example of a poem from one of your issues that addresses that? What is it that you admire, and how do you think your own tastes help or hinder the selection process?

A. The very first poem I selected for Canary was “Birdsong from My Patio”by Ellen Bass, which I solicited (and which considers the effects of pesticide and acid rain on birds and nature – jg). I hoped for more of these and, indeed, there are many. But after a while I branched out into broader stories of events which are contributing to these losses, and too many pieces that simply praise what IS. Some tell of human indifference to other living things, a broader way of considering what’s coming to pass. “Little Fires” by Christina Lovin, for example, in Issue #4 is about the bats we killed. I can think of so many…

As for the last part of your question, I like poems that have something at stake, that are authentic, and reflect both the passion of the poet and the skill and craft to convey that passion. I can’t know, of course, how who I am affects the decisions I make. I try hard to be open to all kinds of styles of poetry that are new to me or that initially fail to move me. Clichés, awkward language, confusion or lack of logical progression, and lack of images and/or metaphors are all serious drawbacks. But I feel very excited when I come across beautiful and well-crafted work that teaches or moves me. I want to share this work with the world. Those are the finest moments in this job.

Q. Thanks very much, Gail. I have just one last question — how do you approach beginning writers?

A. I always give a read to all pieces in a person’s submissions because sometimes a beginning writer stumbles onto one good poem. If I feel someone is almost there, I often say that and ask them to submit again in the future. I sometimes tell a writer who is really pretty good what I like and how I felt the poem fell short.

Ada Limon Named 24^th U.S. Poet Laureate

Ada Limon, author of six poetry collections and winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award, was recently named the new U.S. Poet Laureate, taking over the position held for three years bv Joy Harjo. A professor in the MFA program at Queens University of Charlotte, Limon called her appointment “an incredible honor” and the shock of a lifetime.” https://www.npr.org

Rumi’s Little Book of the Heart

This inspiring little book, with translations by Maryam Mafi and Azima Melita Kolin, offers an excellent introduction to the life and poetry of 13^th-century Sufi poet Mowlana Jallaledin Mohamad Rumi (Hampton Roads, 2016). Born in Persia on September 30th, 1207 (in what is now Afghanistan), Rumi was the son of a renowned Islamic teacher/theologian, a role Rumi himself later assumed. But it wasn’t until the age of thirty-six when he met Shams of Tabriz, a wandering Sufi mystic, that Rumi’s spiritual genius blossomed, notably in the form of his ecstatic, voluminous poetry. In poem after poem he reveals an overwhelming experience of love that “appears on the wings of grace,” and questions, “How can one remain sober drinking Your wine?” Working from Forouzanfar’s edition of Rumi’s The Divan, Mafi and Kolin have created a lively collection that respects it source yet still feels contemporary. Interspersed among the poems are samples of Persian calligraphy by Hassan Behras Shayjani and Rumi’s signature emblem by Nutan Gungorencan.

The Essential Rumi

At a conference in 1976, Robert Bly handed Coleman Barks some dated translations of the 13^th-century Sufi poet Rumi, with the comment that, “These poems need to be released from their cages.” This was the beginning of a lifelong commitment for the former University of Georgia professor, now 85, whose streamlined versions of the great Rumi have now sold well over two million copies.

To say the poems in Barks’s The Essential Rumi (Harper One, 2004) are spiritual may be somewhat misleading. They don’t deal in hope or certainties, or conventional notions of good and bad. What they offer is clarity, openness, and an invitation to share in Rumi’s generous spirit. But there’s also the grief of separation and longing for the beloved — for union, for ecstasy, for the meeting of heaven and earth. In its mature phase, Rumi tells, us, love becomes “oceanic” and “begins to move with the whole” and (there is) “No better love than love with no object.”

Rumi was the son of a Moslem theologian and served in the same capacity for many years, but his poetry isn’t doctrinaire. It stems from a wide knowledge of religion and deep insight into the “living marrow” of being. Coleman Barks’s translations in The Essential Rumi (2004)containnot only Moslem references, but several Christian, Hebrew, Buddhist, and Sufi references, as well. In one poem, “How Finite Minds Most Want to Be,” Jesus, Joseph, and Moses are referenced; in another, “The Well of Sacred Text,” both the Qur’an and the Bible are mentioned in the same line. There are several other examples that demonstrate a kinship of faiths and Rumi’s fluency with their stories. In “A Pilgrimage to a Person,” he says, “Be a pilgrim to the kaaba inside a human being,/and Mecca will rise on its own.” To be “inside the majesty,” to “become a lover,” this was Rumi’s message and the heart of his realization.

I think of these poems almost as living things, as scrapings of DNA from the life of an extraordinary teacher/poet, one whose songs go beyond belief and provide a direct view into “the radiant depth of the self,” as Barks has put it. Jacob Needleman summed up the importance of these translations: “Through Coleman Barks’s inspired renderings, we tired, modern people have come not only to love Rumi, but even — a little — to love who and what Rumi himself loved.” In addition to the poems, which are themselves teaching devices, the introductory comments at the beginning of each section in The Essential Rumi are an education — in culture, history, religion, the use and limits of metaphor, and the fluidity of identity. And if that’s not enough, the volume closes with several savory sounding recipes. Like the poems, they’re guides for living a nourishing life.

Interviews

This interview with poet John Silbey Williams by the editors of the River Heron Review (https://www.riverheronreview.com, July 6, 2022) focuses on craft and offers some of the most practical advice I’ve ever heard from a writer. The author of nine books of poetry and winner of multiple awards, Williams also serves as editor of the Inflectionist Review.

Nicole Vassell interviews poet and playwright Claudia Rankin for The Independent (https://www.independent.co.uk), June 24, 2022. The author of Citizen, An American Lyric, called one of the most influential poetic works of the 21^st century, Rankin speaks candidly here about racism and her new play, The White Card.

Writing Opportunities

New Women’s Voices Chapbook Contest, sponsored by Finishing Line Press, is now accepting poetry manuscripts “by a writer who identifies as a woman and has not yet published a full-length manuscript.” Open until September 15^th, the contest offers publication and a prize of $1500.

Blue Mountain Review, an online journal out of Athens, Georgia, is currently accepting poetry, fiction, and visual arts (no simultaneous submissions) “What we sing saves the soul,” reads the introduction to their website. https://www.bluemountainreview.submittable.com/submit

Next time: The poetry of Japanese Zen poet Ikkyu (Crazy Cloud), and more.