Lucy Spelman:
00:03
It's not something we all can do every moment of the day, but we can find that way in, that opportunity to get involved.
Susan Tacent:
00:12
And I said, I need a project. I need something to do that will has to be a project that is big and meaningful.
Christopher Kondrich:
00:20
The work that we do on this collection is is certainly attempting to curate the kind of conversation that I think that we need to be having as one species on this planet of millions of species.
Narrator:
00:36
Hello. Today we are here to talk about the book Creature Needs: Writers Respond to the Science of Animal Conservation. This is a collection of new literary works by prominent writers paired with excerpts from recent scientific articles that inspired and informed them. Divided into six sections representing the basic needs for survival: air, food, water, shelter, room to move, and each other. The stories and poems in creature needs vividly portray how these essential conditions are under assault through climate change, habitat loss, plastic and industrial pollution, and human intervention in natural landscapes.
Narrator:
01:15
Creature needs is a collaboration with a nonprofit organization. Creature conserve is a five zero one c three nonprofit outreach organization dedicated to growing a creative community that combines art with science to cultivate new pathways for wildlife conservation. The organization brings together artists, designers, writers, and experts with scientific and traditional knowledge in a supportive, welcoming space to learn about threats to wildlife, share empathy for animals, exchange ideas, and find opportunities for growth at the intersection of art, science, and conservation. Their programs are designed to support the collaborative art sci process and are open to people at all skill levels, from all backgrounds, and in all countries. Creature Needs is a kaleidoscopic literary exploration of extinction and conservation.
Narrator:
02:05
Creature needs has three editors. Christopher Condrich is a poet in residence at creature conserve and the author of valuing, which is winner of the national poetry series and contrapuntal. His writing has been published in the believer, the Kenyan review, and the Paris review. Lucy Spellman is founder of Creature Conserve. A zoological medicine veterinarian, she teaches biology at the Rhode Island School of Design and is author of National Geographic Kids Animal Encyclopedia and co editor of The Rhino with Glue On Shoes.
Narrator:
02:37
Susan Taessent, writer in residence at Creature Conserv, is a writer, scholar, and educator whose fiction has been published in Blackbird, Diagram, and Tin House online. Today, we are lucky to have all three editors with us. Welcome Christopher, Lucy, and Susan. Thank you.
Christopher Kondrich:
02:54
So I'd like to begin with what I think sets our collection Creature Needs apart. There are new poems, stories, and essays that are published alongside excerpts from the science that inspired them. This juxtaposition comes out of the work of Creature Conserve. So, yeah, Lucy, I'd love to hear from you about this connection to the organization you founded, but I'd also like us to consider how this joining of literature and science is, to bring us back to the title, what creatures need given the myriad crises they're facing right now.
Lucy Spelman:
03:29
Yeah, Chris. What's great to start with CreatureConserve, you know, it's a a passion project of mine. We're ten years in and, the organization has grown. We are growing a creative community and the ideas in that community, we're all learning, and finding inspiration, new ways to combine art and science. And the ultimate outcome is that each person involved finds their own pathway and we call those art sci pathways.
Lucy Spelman:
03:55
We're all on our own journey in life, right? And I think in terms of taking care of nature, it's not something we all can do every moment of the day. But we can find that way in, that opportunity to get involved. The idea of creature conserved is to make that opportunity open to everybody and especially to think about the two big fields, I would say, or approaches to understanding nature. Right?
Lucy Spelman:
04:21
And one of those is science. I'm a scientist. But the other is art. Right? And we're basically asking the same question in those areas.
Lucy Spelman:
04:29
What's happening in the world around me? How do I relate to it? How do I understand it? Taking care of nature and understanding our relationship with animals is both art and science. It's the idea of creature conserves to create space for that.
Lucy Spelman:
04:41
And and to recognize it is it's complicated, but it's also intricate and fascinating. And science informs some of the decisions we might make, but so do our emotions. So I think what I'm so excited about with the book is it really demonstrates all these ways in, you know, through the voices of the writers and poets. As we read these works, we get taken down different pathways. And I also see these pathways growing.
Lucy Spelman:
05:07
Everybody who has contributed to the book and all of us who read their works, we all then are merging our pathways. Right? And that gives us that many more ways to get involved and to take better care of each other and the animals that we see or interact with on a daily basis, as well as the ones we we might never see, but we know about and and we care about.
Susan Tacent:
05:26
Yeah. I'm gonna back us up a little bit to a time when the book did not exist yet. It was late May, early June '20 '20 '1. The pandemic was still with us, but we were able to feel relatively safe in leaving our houses. We were still masking.
Susan Tacent:
05:43
My daughter was moving out after being home for almost two years to Philadelphia. So she was gonna be living farther than she had ever lived from us in her life, our lives together. And we got on the train, the two of us, and we had to sit two seats apart, and we had to be masked. I came home, and I said, I need a project. I need something to do that will engage me, absorb me, something I care about.
Susan Tacent:
06:07
It has to be something I care about. It has to be a project that is big and meaningful. I gave myself that assignment as I had to learn how to let my daughter live apart again after going through that once when she went away to college. My heart needed something as well as my mind. I thought, well, I know nothing better in my life experience than working with Lucy.
Susan Tacent:
06:31
We've been friends for many decades. We won't count. And I thought, okay. This there's gotta be something we can do. And Lucy, Chris, and I had been teaching workshops for Creature Conserve where we used a process that we worked through and developed based on what Lucy had been doing with the visual artists, which was teaching, learning something about the science, the actual science, how a bird breathes or how a whale communicates or, you know, how to artificially inseminate an elephant.
Susan Tacent:
07:02
I could not do that if I needed to, but I know it can be done. And I would know the people to ask, which is interesting. Not everybody can say that. So I said, Lucy, let's do a book. Let's find a bunch of contemporary writers and poets to put through the process that we put through in our workshops and get a book out of it.
Susan Tacent:
07:20
And she said, okay. But we have to ask Chris. We want Chris to do it. I said, okay. And so we went to Chris and Chris said a instant and enthusiastic and brow creasing yes.
Susan Tacent:
07:34
Because you could see Chris already was writing the book in his head and figuring out things. And so there we had our project. And, you know, meetings followed and thinking followed and that wonderful thing that writers and artists do all the time, which is off camera thinking maybe where you're doing something else and all of a sudden you realize, woah, we could do this, that, the other thing. So the book was born out of that need to let go of my daughter, trust that she was safe, and to nourish myself in a meaningful way. And I think that the planet right now is asking us to do some version of that and that we better do it.
Susan Tacent:
08:14
We better be I hesitate to use the word maternal, but it is a sort of maternity in terms of caretaking and listening and recognition and understanding and respect. And so that's how the book got started. And then, you know, we thought, well, we want to ask people to do this. What do we do? We'll send them articles.
Susan Tacent:
08:35
We'll ask Lucy to put articles together. We'll set it in The United States. We will, limit it to writers writing in English. We'll limit it to poets and writers who we either know or want to know, and we will ask them to read the science article and respond to it. And we won't give them instruction, writing instruction as we might have or even reading instruction as we might have in a an actual workshop.
Susan Tacent:
09:05
Right? We will trust that they have enough experience and enough talent and enough interest and enough love for the subject to put something together. We set word limits. We set a 3,000 word or 10 pages for poets. Poets get a little more elbow room, because of the white space on pages.
Susan Tacent:
09:22
And we started to make a list of whom we might ask. And we thought about writers and poets who have experience, sort of, you know, have talent, have ex have written things that ex that indicated interest already in the topic of animal conservation and the bigger picture of basically saving species, saving planet. And we started emailing people, people we knew, people we had seen read, people we didn't know, but we knew their books. There's no pretense. If I wrote to you and I said I love your poetry, I it was because I love your poetry.
Susan Tacent:
09:58
If I met you at a writing workshop and you blew me away, asking you something now, that was because that's how I was feeling about your work. And 98% of people said yes. They said it quickly, and they thanked us. It's not every day that you are thanked for asking somebody to do something. And, you know, with every response and, you know, the emails that went back between Chris and me, this one said yes.
Susan Tacent:
10:26
That one said yes. And then we would tell Lucy, you're not gonna believe who said yes. Every confirmation was another heart beat in this project. You know, it was like the book, the book still didn't exist. It didn't have a cover.
Susan Tacent:
10:38
It didn't have page numbers. It didn't have illustrate. You know, it didn't have all the the science articles picked. It didn't have the work, but every yes was exciting. And then we sent them an article.
Susan Tacent:
10:50
Lucy curated the articles, and I'm gonna ask Lucy to talk a little bit more about that. But I do wanna just add one more thing here at this point about the book coming from the again, this idea about we're coming out of a pandemic and maybe it's safe to get a little farther away from home, but where where are we and and what are we doing and how forward? Chris and I went back and forth about how to organize the book that didn't exist yet because if it were going to exist, it would have to have some sort of structure. Right? And you start to immediately have to make choices.
Susan Tacent:
11:22
And so we came up with something very basic, which Lucy had been teaching me over and over again. And, Maggie, you've read it beautifully before. It's those six needs that every living creature requires, which is air, food, water, shelter, room to move, and each other. Those became the six sections. And then we asked Lucy to find animals, creatures, vertebrates, invertebrates, birds, sea creatures, land creatures, and we asked her to find articles for that.
Susan Tacent:
11:51
And then the writers were asked to choose what topic, what what need they wanted, and then we would send them an article.
Christopher Kondrich:
11:58
Yeah. I mean, I think that the collection and that the work that we did on this collection is is certainly attempting to curate the kind of conversation that I think that we need to be having as one species on this planet of millions of species. And that is not only how do we take care of other species, but how are the needs of other species interconnected? So, yeah, I'd love to hear from you, Lucy, a little bit about your your thought process about selecting the articles. You know, as we know, the crises that species are facing are myriad, are innumerable.
Christopher Kondrich:
12:34
You know, it's hard to think about one problem without having to grapple with all the other problems that are related. And, you know, it it it often feels daunting, especially for people who are concerned about biodiversity in this world. You know, another related question is in terms of, you know, picking these articles, we're picking what is the creative work gonna be coming out of? What is it that we wanna shed light on? Right?
Christopher Kondrich:
12:59
What do we think is important out of all of the different research that's that's out there and Scott that's coming out, you know, every single day?
Lucy Spelman:
13:08
Yeah. So I think in terms of the basic needs and the the selecting of the papers, what I I remember, Chris and Susan, you guys setting up a meeting with me and being very excited about, we we know how to organize the book. And I was thrilled. I teach. I'm in now my fourteenth year teaching, biology to art and design students at Rhode Island School of Design.
Lucy Spelman:
13:28
And what I where I usually begin is our biology connects us. Right? We are all animals, and we all need those same basic things. And yet humans are the dominant species, right? So in general, we control those resources and it's, that's really the crux of this.
Lucy Spelman:
13:45
Like, it's really up to us whether we are all going to have clean air or clean water, whether we're going to have even our own species room to move each other. So that is for me as trained in biology and then trained in geological medicine and then applying that work in conservation and in teaching and in my own writing, it's really that idea that it's, it's really beautifully simple. If I'm not healthy in my world, if I don't have air, food, water, shelter, room to move in each other, then the animals in my environment also don't. Right? And it works the other way.
Lucy Spelman:
14:20
If the animals have those things or I can take steps to help those animals have what they need, then I'm, I'm much more likely to have what I need. So I see the health of everything is connected and how also if we you know, because everything's connected, any small move in the wrong direction sets off a ripple, right? A chain reaction that is not good. And that's that's largely what humans have been doing, a lot of negative ripples. And we have to at least stop the ripple to stop things from getting worse.
Lucy Spelman:
14:52
And we can actually move those reactions forward because everything's connected, right? Because if I make the soil in my yard healthier, I'm going to have more earthworms or, and and and monarch butterflies. And, you know, it's that's the optimistic view that we can take advantage of the fact that our shared needs connect us. It's so fundamental. It's so obvious in a way.
Lucy Spelman:
15:15
But it also, as we were describing the work of Creature Conserved, it's just the beginning of a pathway. It's a place to begin. So when Chris and Susan said, let's organize the book this way, I was like, okay. So I could look for I mean, there's so much scientific literature, right? But I could pick species, animal species in The US that are in trouble and look for recent papers that just focus on one of those needs.
Lucy Spelman:
15:41
Maybe just even the title is the focus because, you know, when you go read about any animal and it's and what's happening to it, again, we're all connected. So all of those potential problems, whether that's climate change or pollution of the water or not enough room to not a no corridor left for the animal to move from one place to the other. Every summary of a problem is gonna touch on all of those needs. But science is about honing down and picking getting very specific. And and that's also kind of the opportunity.
Lucy Spelman:
16:10
It's like, well, if we really look at how this lizard is being impacted by this wind farm, what is really happening? And if you can really understand what's happening, then you can pinpoint that part of the chain. Right? Okay. This is about the wind is changing the humidity and it's changing how this creature lives.
Lucy Spelman:
16:28
And then you can think about, well, what can we do about it? That was the first criteria. And the second criteria was, yeah, variety of creatures. And the third one was, you know, and I teach non scientists how to go through science papers. Like it has to be a readable paper, some scientific papers, just the way they're formatted, the way they look on the page, they're just really hard to get through.
Lucy Spelman:
16:48
So a little bit of it was like, there's so much great science out there as a scientist, but it's, it's hidden, right? It's in technical language, either in a journal or publicly available as all the papers we used. But it's, it's hidden in that we aren't accessing it. It's not something that we would naturally go to. We meaning the non scientist community.
Lucy Spelman:
17:07
And even in my community, like, science has lots of of silos within it. We don't all read each other's science. So I some of the papers just had to be readable. And there were several cases where Chris or Susan were like, yeah, this paper's not doing it. It's just either the animal wasn't quite interesting enough or, like, I think there was one time, Chris, where we were like, do we do this animal or that animal?
Lucy Spelman:
17:28
It's like so that was fun because we wanted the writers to be excited. But at the same time, it is actually limitless. The possibilities are limitless. And as Susan said, we picked American Species because we the two of you guys really felt like we can pull in the American writers. But the book is honestly is a template for the same book picking 40 species in East Africa or in Australia, you know, or in Europe and pulling people together and looking at what's happening.
Lucy Spelman:
18:00
It wasn't hard to pick the science, but I think it was a specific effort. It helped. It helped to say, we want to, have this rubric, if you will. And I think at that point, we had no idea how well it was gonna work.
Susan Tacent:
18:15
Yeah. Can I jump in there? Because I just wanna talk to the writers who we queried and who said yes. Just think for a minute what Lucy just said about lizard and humidity and wind farm. Little light bulbs go off in the writer's mind and head and heart because that's a story.
Susan Tacent:
18:33
That's a poem. That's that's material that we non scientists wouldn't have had access to. And suddenly we have this bit of information that is kind of mind blowing and important, and we've got something to work with, and we realize we have something to say. We have character. We have plot.
Susan Tacent:
18:48
We have setting. We have conflict. We have potential solution. We have understanding. It's the perfect mix of ingredients for a story or a poem to come out.
Susan Tacent:
18:57
I knew that. I knew that from teaching in person that that was gonna happen every time somebody got an article that they wouldn't have accessed otherwise, and then they knew what section they were in. And I was also, Lucy, thinking about when when there was one time where you changed a creature from air to water or something, and so, you know, things got moved around. It was exciting to ask you for articles and to know that we were gonna get the good science back.
Christopher Kondrich:
19:23
Yeah. I I'll just say that the poets I reached out to were just some whose work inspires me and who I knew were already thinking about the way in which poetry can cultivate civic engagement and how can how, you know, how they that poetic space can be a space of civic engagement, whose work was already sort of thinking about the role that poetry can play in culture and society, and what can poets and poems already you know, what can they take on as artists and citizens and private individuals? And so these things were on my mind. I did not know what was going to be coming back or the ways in which the poems were going to be, you know, engaging with the science, whether through form, you know, Sean Hill's poem comes to mind, or it's through sound and syntax, the, you know, Helenie Siclianos' poem comes to mind, whether poems were going to be innovating, you know, in terms of form, and language, or working with perceived forms like, you know, Crick's Endos Peros' sonnets. I was surprised by what came back and heartened because I knew what these poets and writers were doing was the work of deriving truth from fact, Thinking about, you know, the facts that were in the paper and doing the work that all writers, all artists do, and that is to think about how to distill those facts into a truth, you know, that that's in the art that's going to move people, that's going to stir people towards further thought and and action.
Christopher Kondrich:
20:54
So I was deeply moved and surprised by what contributors were able to to write and and deeply inspiring and and, honestly, deeply grateful these contributors were able to do this really important work. And, you know, I I'm just so excited to share this collection with readers because I think that they're going to be deeply inspired by this collaboration between literature and science. And, you know, and and like you were saying, Lucy, you know, maybe this is a template. I'm hoping that it inspires people to think about how cross disciplinary work can not only be a driver for the positive social and political change, but also can be a really great opportunity for writers.
Susan Tacent:
21:36
Yeah. I'm gonna I'm gonna add to that. It is it is an opportunity, and we were grateful. Every time a piece came back, and they came back pretty quickly, we we didn't have to chase too many people down. It was like having a birthday every day.
Susan Tacent:
21:49
You know? Look what came in look what came this. It was so exciting to see the names of these writers and poets that you admire and that you admire usually from afar, and then you get an email from them with new writing that it was not been published, that was inspired by an article that you sent that Lucy curated about a creature that they hadn't thought about ever probably in their life before and certainly not in those terms. And then, you know, to know intuitively and then realize that we were putting together a workbook or a journal for people because the wonderful folks at University of Minnesota Press designed this book in ways that we could not have dreamt up ourselves. And we are so excited about the look of it from cover to cover and everything inside.
Susan Tacent:
22:34
It's just this perfect balance of the writing, the science, the illustrations, the categories. It's really a dream come true from a design point of view, and it's got places where a reader could write in it. And it it's because of the way it's set up, you could pick up the book anywhere and read about, say, all the creatures that live in the sky before you went back to and you could go through it that way or you could go through it by only sea creatures. Or you could read the science excerpt and then write your own piece and then read what somebody else did, which is pretty exciting to do from a creative writing point of view and from a writing workshop point of view, but also just from an interacting with the science and the creativity and your own planet. There's some creature for everybody in there.
Susan Tacent:
23:26
You know, we've all seen some of them or we've heard of some of them. And what a gift to hear about one that you didn't know about or to find out how this works or how a respiratory system in a creature works that isn't a human creature. I still am amazed that there was a time before the book existed. We have hard copies in our hands, so we know it's real. You know, from those very first, yes, I would love to do that, like, I wrote to Charles Baxter.
Susan Tacent:
23:52
Baxter. He's become a friend, so it was like, dear Charlie, will you do this? And he said, yes. And I said, well, what category do you want? And he said, you pick.
Susan Tacent:
24:01
And I said, okay. And I picked air, and I picked an article about fireflies, and I sent it to him. And the next day, he wrote back, dear Susan, you sent me fireflies, and this is what happened. And there was this beautiful page and a half long piece, and it opens the book, and it's just magnificent. Annie Hartnett, we sent her polar bears, and she said, oh, no.
Susan Tacent:
24:26
I was hoping not to get polar bears. And I said, I know, but you could do it. And she wrote this gorgeous story about a co an elderly couple and who's the wife doesn't want to upset the husband, so she cuts articles out of the paper before she gives it to him to read. And, you know, she did it. She did the polar bear justice, and that's the thing, you know, because we were fortunate enough to be able to contact writers who are so talented and and have so much investment in the survival of this planet.
Susan Tacent:
24:56
We got back beautiful pieces, you know, with a lot of heart. It's just like watching some amazing seed that you planted and looking out the window, and there's this garden there that is just thriving and diverse and healthy and hopeful.
Lucy Spelman:
25:13
Yes. Susan, I you know, I think something we've all the three of us have talked about and kind of the core at Creature Conserv is that this is a tough topic. Right? Wildlife populations all over the world are declining, and the reason is us. Right?
Lucy Spelman:
25:25
Human impacts are causing this. It is a mass extinction, and it's not easy to think about or feel. Distilling truth from fact, finding your own way to connect with this this topic. You know, the science can say x number of polar bears, this is what's gonna happen. The science can predict the climate change, but it's really the art that lets us internalize that and connect with it and taps into our emotions and our subconscious.
Lucy Spelman:
25:53
And, you know, it also gives the problem, if you will, context. You know, we all have different cultures, different life experience. We spend different amounts of time in nature from, you know, almost none to a lot. And so those those are all things that affect how you deal with this topic. For me, the book has a similar potential impact as the exhibitions that we put on at Creature Conserved.
Lucy Spelman:
26:14
As you mentioned, we started our first programs were bringing visual artists together to learn from, scientists and other experts in conservation. And we've had four major exhibits now, 30 or 40 visual artists making work around a topic, learning from experts, spending time in the field, you know, different amounts of science. That's all great. But when you would watch people come into the exhibit, it's a lot to take in 40 artworks around how we conflict with urban wildlife or how we use animals in the wildlife trade or even just the fact that we have this thing that is extinction happening. And people would just be drawn to one or two pieces, maybe three.
Lucy Spelman:
26:50
You know, we all have a different aesthetic. We're all feeling differently on a given day. And to have the choice to say, yeah, I wanna watch this short film, or I wanna just go up to that sculpture and hang out with it. Or in this case, I just I just want to take in one poem. I think this is really important that we all have choices.
Lucy Spelman:
27:08
That's what I was alluding to before in our pathways. It doesn't have to always be all in front of us at every moment. But we do need to have ways that we can engage with this topic. We could say that the science, the knowledge that says we're animals too, and we need a healthy planet. Right?
Lucy Spelman:
27:26
That's pure science. But what helps us take that in and make it feel real, and make us maybe wanna make a different decision about how we live our lives and the impact we have on the planet, it's really through the arts. And, you know, artists have always been interpreters of our time, whether that's music or performance, writing. And this is, again, if the book is a template or a prompt, as Susan was saying, or for a classroom or anyone. The more and more and more and more this engagement with our relationship with other animals and the fact that we can put our finger on a spot in that chain reaction and make a decision about whether we want to change the outcome, I think it becomes a lot more just part of day to day life and rather than some big challenge that somebody else is gonna solve.
Lucy Spelman:
28:12
I think we were talking earlier about, you know, the subcategories, what's causing extinction, right? They're huge. Climate change, you know, resource extraction, habitat loss, global trade, emerging diseases, the way we farm, the way we hunt. Even those are just big, big categories. And it's it's easier to just start somewhere much more specific like that lizard or any of the other or the polar bear.
Lucy Spelman:
28:38
And I think we are fascinated with what the experience was of the writers who participated because the process is is more important, really. We can engage and we can think about this together and we can make a little shift in our behavior together. And that's what that's what Creature Conserv is all about, is supporting that process and helping people who've never done this before and never thought about bringing art and science together or even taking in something that's art and science together. Just saying, Hey, come see. This is a new way to engage with this topic.
Lucy Spelman:
29:09
It's hard. It's hard work. And the writing is so beautiful. And again, I sit as the scientist, not as the one with that amazing talent of our writers or the visual artists. I'm always fascinated with what that process is like and how they went from that science to the actual writing piece.
Christopher Kondrich:
29:26
Well, you know, we get bombarded with information on a daily basis, and even the most passionate and dedicated of us are taking in information on such a regular basis, we move on from it. We go about our day having learned something, whether it's the science that we're learning about species or issues that are climate change related, we move on. And I'm, you know, thinking about this title, creature needs, what these creatures need is for us to not move on. In order for us to actually grapple with the issues and these squeeze questions of our impact, in order to actually make the policy and and social changes that we need to make. And, you know, I think that that's what they really need.
Christopher Kondrich:
30:11
And, you know, I, for one, need the writers in these collections to help me remember, to move me, because I, you know, I can't move on from an incredible poem. I can't move on from a story or a beautifully written lyric essay. The information that is conveyed through literature is something that stays with me, and it's much harder for me to shake it if it stirs me, if it moves me. What I really appreciate about this collection is that you read the science, and then that science is integrated into the literature that is there too, and the literature by our extraordinary contributors makes it stick so that you can't shake it. The other thing that I wanted to say is that it's just really important to me for there to be aesthetic diversity, for there to be diversity across, the voices of of writers and lived experiences that are collected in, you know, in this book because it's gonna be even more difficult to shake off a poem or a story from one page to the next as you're reading the collection if they're coming at it from from all different aesthetic directions.
Christopher Kondrich:
31:22
I think that that's what makes this book so incredibly dynamic, but also really important, is that we have such diversity of voices and of writers that are helping this information really be be unshakable.
Susan Tacent:
31:36
Yeah. We worked hard to ensure that diversity for those reasons that Chris has just delineated so beautifully. And at some point, wanted to say somewhere in the book, this is not an anthology. We settled on the word collection. We love the polyvocal call for change that Minnesota came up with.
Susan Tacent:
31:55
It's a map in a way of the writers and poets who live all over the country and travel all over the world. It's a map of the creatures who are featured, examined, considered, responded to in the book. One of the things I love about it is the idea that until each contributor has read the entire book, they only see their tiny little piece of the map. And until a reader comes to the book and reads the entire book, they've only seen one tiny little piece of the map. And to go back to creature conserves emphasis on connection and how we are all connected and how we are all animals, humans, and, you know, rhinoceroses and octopuses, all same six needs pretty much in different, you know, doses, I guess.
Susan Tacent:
32:48
When we see that map fill in, even though it's just part of the planet, it's still going to give the clearest picture that I can think of off the top of my head of what we're facing and how interconnected everything is and what needs to be done. Because, again, as Chris and Lucy have been saying, because we are getting at it from not only the science, but also the intellect and the heart because some of these pieces have an emotional component to them. Some of them have an intellectual you know, they they have all the the good stuff that we want in our literature. Once we experience that, I think there is a deeper understanding and perhaps a willingness to slow down and to figure out ways to help rather than run away or hide or simply cry, which on any given day is not a terrible response, but is not going to ultimately get us to where we want to be.
Lucy Spelman:
33:47
Yes. I I was just going to echo both of what you guys said and that we all have creatures that are proximal to us. Like, what creature did you see today? Did you think twice about how its day went? You know?
Lucy Spelman:
33:58
It's okay that we're we are human, so we are social creatures, and we are thinking about each other. But we're also a visual species. We see creatures, and we really are purposely not engaging with them when we see, let's say, a squirrel or a robin if we're here in the Northeast. But what if you did engage? Right?
Lucy Spelman:
34:17
And Susan, that's one of the, exercises we do with one of our teaching workshops is the prompt, if I have this right, Susan is, you know, pick an animal that you saw on your way to the to to this workshop or you saw in the morning of the workshop and imagine what was happening to it at that moment. And I think that may seem just very esoteric, but it's it's a step toward feeling that connection and sharing, yeah, your own existence with a nonhuman animal. Hanging out with creatures is not for just for kids. Right? It helps us as adults and the book as much as we hope everybody of every age reads it.
Lucy Spelman:
34:52
But it this is for us, those of us who are making decisions on a day to day basis about how we wanna use our resources. And I think animals are a way in, and it can be fascinating. Curiosity, being open, being curious, and being present. Right? If you're if you're open and curious and present about nature around you in the moment, you can manage that.
Lucy Spelman:
35:14
If you start to think about it, all of it all at once, it can be too much.
Susan Tacent:
35:18
Yeah. I I ran into a local contributor, and I asked Jody what Jody Vinton, what was it like to write about owls? And she she had a a bunch of answers that I thought were wonderful, but one of the things she said is she'll never forget the, idea of the owls wearing tiny little backpacks they were fitted with so that they could be part of a research experiment. And so now, of course, I now picture owls with tiny little backpacks, and I get to think about that. And then I get to think about what would an owl be?
Susan Tacent:
35:46
What were they looking for? What were the science questions? And what did they find out. It piques my curiosity. It piques my creative impulse.
Susan Tacent:
35:53
And and, Lucy, the writing exercise, we developed that for urban wildlife, the workshop on urban wildlife learning to coexist. And we asked them, so who'd you meet on your way in? Was it a squirrel? Was it a hawk? Was it a crow?
Susan Tacent:
36:06
You know, was it a snail? And then we asked them to write, you know, what do you think they were up to? And what would you ask them? If you could speak to them, what would you ask them, and what would you wish for them? And, you know, you're in a room full of people who self selected to take this workshop, and so you know that it's really easy to make them cry by telling them a sad story about animals.
Susan Tacent:
36:27
It's really easy to make them say awe and laugh if you tell them kind of a funny story about animals because animals are endlessly amusing. And it's really easy to make them care because they already care. It was just a room full of, like, sparkling responses and and people talking amongst themselves about what creatures they saw. And just also asking them to think about and after the workshops, asking people to go outside and interact a little bit. And, you know, the book is gonna do that too.
Susan Tacent:
36:55
It's I hope it's gonna give impetus toward engaging, which is what we're really talking about here in a way. Right?
Christopher Kondrich:
37:01
Yeah. This conversation about what what the creative work in this collection is doing, you know, sort of, gearing us towards the present, makes me think of this excellent essay, by Chelsea Steiner or Scudder that was published in Emergence magazine called The Lord God Bird. And she writes at one point, quote, what if we didn't jump straight into resignation, but turned away from a future ending and toward the present, toward that which is immediately around us? Perhaps this is the real work to be done here now. You know, and I think that that's kind of what this this collection is doing because there is the solution.
Christopher Kondrich:
37:39
This collection is very much interested in trying to seek out solutions that the science is offering us. And part of that solution is becoming rooted in the present that is immediately around us through the creative work. There's this writer whose work I really love, Jedidiah Purdy, and he asks a question in an essay. His essay is called Thinking Like a Mountain, and it was published in n plus one. And, this question that I I keep thinking about, you know, year in and year out after I've read it, he writes, what is looking back at us through other species' eyes?
Christopher Kondrich:
38:18
Could we ever escape our own heads and know the viewpoint of a hawk? Is there such a thing as thinking like a mountain? The way I think about these questions is could we ever escape our own heads and know the viewpoint of a hawk? Of course not. Of course not.
Christopher Kondrich:
38:39
But I think that the act of trying is really important because it helps us to deemphasize the human centeredness that I think is at the root and cause of biodiversity loss, the anthropocentrism that's at the root of of the myriad crises facing all these species. I think we have to try. I don't think anybody is going to read a novel that's in the voice of a hawk and actually believe that that novel is capturing exactly what the consciousness of a hawk is like. But that is an act of empathy that is integral, that is deeply compassionate and essential to living equitably on a planet of million species. So that's how I think about that question.
Christopher Kondrich:
39:34
I I don't know. I would I would love love to hear your response to the to the party quote.
Susan Tacent:
39:40
Yeah. It's also willingness to walk across the divide, the apparent divide. Right? To take a step over that line that we think is there that we that we don't realize that we're drawing and that is perhaps a false boundary.
Lucy Spelman:
39:54
Yeah. I agree with that. But I think it's also about creating space to learn what it's like to be a hawk or a mountain and then to share empathy
Christopher Kondrich:
40:02
or
Lucy Spelman:
40:02
express empathy. And then what ideas come from that, right? It's that idea that it's accessible to all of us. We're all part of nature. And I think it that quote goes beyond we're all animals.
Lucy Spelman:
40:13
It goes we're all part of nature. Right? We are as much of nature as a mountain is. So I find it, you know, this is sounds so simple again, but if we begin there, okay, yeah, we are part of that mountain and we have a stake in whether that mountain persists or not. And that's the beginning of feeling empowered.
Lucy Spelman:
40:35
We can't imagine exactly what that hawk is seeing, but we could try. That puts us in the present and empowers us to feel like we can participate in even just the knowing, not necessarily the solving of a problem. Right? In wildlife conservation and in in any big sort of effort, societal effort to solve a big problem, it can be overwhelming. Again, we talked about this earlier.
Lucy Spelman:
40:57
And I think it can be so overwhelming that it feels like that's somebody else's job, then nothing happens, or it feels like there's a prescribed way of behaving. And I think what I love about, this quote and the book and exhibits that we support at Creature Goods or really all of the programs we support is it's not prescriptive. There is no one way. There is no this is how you do, this is how you help wildlife. We're all here on this planet where there's many, many ways and we can all make a choice and find that path.
Lucy Spelman:
41:27
I have one question for Chris and Susan again, just thinking about as the book comes out and we are excited to organize with with the University of Minnesota Press some book launches and some readings. What do you guys think or hope will happen once the book is out there?
Susan Tacent:
41:44
I hope they all join hands and start a revolution, but that's just a fantasy. We don't know what it was like for them. We only know what we got back from them. It's an opportunity to let the book continue to do its work, I think, for people, right, and for creatures. So I think it's just, again, just the beginning of this magic garden that we've planted and that they've planted, and I think it's gonna be amazing.
Christopher Kondrich:
42:09
I, for one, am I'm really looking forward to this book being out in the world, and and, of course, to the events that that contributors I can be having. But, of course, I mean, I'm I'm I'm I really want this to actually do have an impact. And what I'm I'm hoping that this book will inspire people to think about are the ways in which biodiversity loss and and the the the challenges that species are facing, that it's it's happening all around us. It's local. I'm hoping that that this collection will inspire folks to find out ways in which they can be of some use in their local ecosystem, in their local community.
Lucy Spelman:
42:52
Yeah. I could add to that, Chris, because I think at at Creature Conserv, we talk a lot about that pathway is not a short term. Sometimes it's it can take months to years to find that way in. Right? So I think the expectation that I have is start somewhere.
Lucy Spelman:
43:07
I think that's what you're saying. It's the book as a starting point. The call is wildlife populations are declining. The response is creature needs. The response is let's say, hey, we can all try something new.
Lucy Spelman:
43:18
We can combine art and science. We can find our way into this topic. So it's an invitation to respond in a way that makes sense to whoever you are. And again, it has there's no prescription other than, you know, right here, right now, we we need to do something. And there's so many ways, so many things you can do.
Susan Tacent:
43:37
Yeah. Lucy and and and, Chris, I think the science and that the science is not over our heads, and it's not out of reach, and it's not going to hurt us. And we can access it, and we can use it to help. And it can activate us, motivate us, inform us.
Narrator:
43:57
This has been a University of Minnesota Press production. The book, Creature Needs, Writers Respond to the Science of Animal Conservation is available from University of Minnesota Press. Thank you for listening.
00:03
It's not something we all can do every moment of the day, but we can find that way in, that opportunity to get involved.
Susan Tacent:
00:12
And I said, I need a project. I need something to do that will has to be a project that is big and meaningful.
Christopher Kondrich:
00:20
The work that we do on this collection is is certainly attempting to curate the kind of conversation that I think that we need to be having as one species on this planet of millions of species.
Narrator:
00:36
Hello. Today we are here to talk about the book Creature Needs: Writers Respond to the Science of Animal Conservation. This is a collection of new literary works by prominent writers paired with excerpts from recent scientific articles that inspired and informed them. Divided into six sections representing the basic needs for survival: air, food, water, shelter, room to move, and each other. The stories and poems in creature needs vividly portray how these essential conditions are under assault through climate change, habitat loss, plastic and industrial pollution, and human intervention in natural landscapes.
Narrator:
01:15
Creature needs is a collaboration with a nonprofit organization. Creature conserve is a five zero one c three nonprofit outreach organization dedicated to growing a creative community that combines art with science to cultivate new pathways for wildlife conservation. The organization brings together artists, designers, writers, and experts with scientific and traditional knowledge in a supportive, welcoming space to learn about threats to wildlife, share empathy for animals, exchange ideas, and find opportunities for growth at the intersection of art, science, and conservation. Their programs are designed to support the collaborative art sci process and are open to people at all skill levels, from all backgrounds, and in all countries. Creature Needs is a kaleidoscopic literary exploration of extinction and conservation.
Narrator:
02:05
Creature needs has three editors. Christopher Condrich is a poet in residence at creature conserve and the author of valuing, which is winner of the national poetry series and contrapuntal. His writing has been published in the believer, the Kenyan review, and the Paris review. Lucy Spellman is founder of Creature Conserve. A zoological medicine veterinarian, she teaches biology at the Rhode Island School of Design and is author of National Geographic Kids Animal Encyclopedia and co editor of The Rhino with Glue On Shoes.
Narrator:
02:37
Susan Taessent, writer in residence at Creature Conserv, is a writer, scholar, and educator whose fiction has been published in Blackbird, Diagram, and Tin House online. Today, we are lucky to have all three editors with us. Welcome Christopher, Lucy, and Susan. Thank you.
Christopher Kondrich:
02:54
So I'd like to begin with what I think sets our collection Creature Needs apart. There are new poems, stories, and essays that are published alongside excerpts from the science that inspired them. This juxtaposition comes out of the work of Creature Conserve. So, yeah, Lucy, I'd love to hear from you about this connection to the organization you founded, but I'd also like us to consider how this joining of literature and science is, to bring us back to the title, what creatures need given the myriad crises they're facing right now.
Lucy Spelman:
03:29
Yeah, Chris. What's great to start with CreatureConserve, you know, it's a a passion project of mine. We're ten years in and, the organization has grown. We are growing a creative community and the ideas in that community, we're all learning, and finding inspiration, new ways to combine art and science. And the ultimate outcome is that each person involved finds their own pathway and we call those art sci pathways.
Lucy Spelman:
03:55
We're all on our own journey in life, right? And I think in terms of taking care of nature, it's not something we all can do every moment of the day. But we can find that way in, that opportunity to get involved. The idea of creature conserved is to make that opportunity open to everybody and especially to think about the two big fields, I would say, or approaches to understanding nature. Right?
Lucy Spelman:
04:21
And one of those is science. I'm a scientist. But the other is art. Right? And we're basically asking the same question in those areas.
Lucy Spelman:
04:29
What's happening in the world around me? How do I relate to it? How do I understand it? Taking care of nature and understanding our relationship with animals is both art and science. It's the idea of creature conserves to create space for that.
Lucy Spelman:
04:41
And and to recognize it is it's complicated, but it's also intricate and fascinating. And science informs some of the decisions we might make, but so do our emotions. So I think what I'm so excited about with the book is it really demonstrates all these ways in, you know, through the voices of the writers and poets. As we read these works, we get taken down different pathways. And I also see these pathways growing.
Lucy Spelman:
05:07
Everybody who has contributed to the book and all of us who read their works, we all then are merging our pathways. Right? And that gives us that many more ways to get involved and to take better care of each other and the animals that we see or interact with on a daily basis, as well as the ones we we might never see, but we know about and and we care about.
Susan Tacent:
05:26
Yeah. I'm gonna back us up a little bit to a time when the book did not exist yet. It was late May, early June '20 '20 '1. The pandemic was still with us, but we were able to feel relatively safe in leaving our houses. We were still masking.
Susan Tacent:
05:43
My daughter was moving out after being home for almost two years to Philadelphia. So she was gonna be living farther than she had ever lived from us in her life, our lives together. And we got on the train, the two of us, and we had to sit two seats apart, and we had to be masked. I came home, and I said, I need a project. I need something to do that will engage me, absorb me, something I care about.
Susan Tacent:
06:07
It has to be something I care about. It has to be a project that is big and meaningful. I gave myself that assignment as I had to learn how to let my daughter live apart again after going through that once when she went away to college. My heart needed something as well as my mind. I thought, well, I know nothing better in my life experience than working with Lucy.
Susan Tacent:
06:31
We've been friends for many decades. We won't count. And I thought, okay. This there's gotta be something we can do. And Lucy, Chris, and I had been teaching workshops for Creature Conserve where we used a process that we worked through and developed based on what Lucy had been doing with the visual artists, which was teaching, learning something about the science, the actual science, how a bird breathes or how a whale communicates or, you know, how to artificially inseminate an elephant.
Susan Tacent:
07:02
I could not do that if I needed to, but I know it can be done. And I would know the people to ask, which is interesting. Not everybody can say that. So I said, Lucy, let's do a book. Let's find a bunch of contemporary writers and poets to put through the process that we put through in our workshops and get a book out of it.
Susan Tacent:
07:20
And she said, okay. But we have to ask Chris. We want Chris to do it. I said, okay. And so we went to Chris and Chris said a instant and enthusiastic and brow creasing yes.
Susan Tacent:
07:34
Because you could see Chris already was writing the book in his head and figuring out things. And so there we had our project. And, you know, meetings followed and thinking followed and that wonderful thing that writers and artists do all the time, which is off camera thinking maybe where you're doing something else and all of a sudden you realize, woah, we could do this, that, the other thing. So the book was born out of that need to let go of my daughter, trust that she was safe, and to nourish myself in a meaningful way. And I think that the planet right now is asking us to do some version of that and that we better do it.
Susan Tacent:
08:14
We better be I hesitate to use the word maternal, but it is a sort of maternity in terms of caretaking and listening and recognition and understanding and respect. And so that's how the book got started. And then, you know, we thought, well, we want to ask people to do this. What do we do? We'll send them articles.
Susan Tacent:
08:35
We'll ask Lucy to put articles together. We'll set it in The United States. We will, limit it to writers writing in English. We'll limit it to poets and writers who we either know or want to know, and we will ask them to read the science article and respond to it. And we won't give them instruction, writing instruction as we might have or even reading instruction as we might have in a an actual workshop.
Susan Tacent:
09:05
Right? We will trust that they have enough experience and enough talent and enough interest and enough love for the subject to put something together. We set word limits. We set a 3,000 word or 10 pages for poets. Poets get a little more elbow room, because of the white space on pages.
Susan Tacent:
09:22
And we started to make a list of whom we might ask. And we thought about writers and poets who have experience, sort of, you know, have talent, have ex have written things that ex that indicated interest already in the topic of animal conservation and the bigger picture of basically saving species, saving planet. And we started emailing people, people we knew, people we had seen read, people we didn't know, but we knew their books. There's no pretense. If I wrote to you and I said I love your poetry, I it was because I love your poetry.
Susan Tacent:
09:58
If I met you at a writing workshop and you blew me away, asking you something now, that was because that's how I was feeling about your work. And 98% of people said yes. They said it quickly, and they thanked us. It's not every day that you are thanked for asking somebody to do something. And, you know, with every response and, you know, the emails that went back between Chris and me, this one said yes.
Susan Tacent:
10:26
That one said yes. And then we would tell Lucy, you're not gonna believe who said yes. Every confirmation was another heart beat in this project. You know, it was like the book, the book still didn't exist. It didn't have a cover.
Susan Tacent:
10:38
It didn't have page numbers. It didn't have illustrate. You know, it didn't have all the the science articles picked. It didn't have the work, but every yes was exciting. And then we sent them an article.
Susan Tacent:
10:50
Lucy curated the articles, and I'm gonna ask Lucy to talk a little bit more about that. But I do wanna just add one more thing here at this point about the book coming from the again, this idea about we're coming out of a pandemic and maybe it's safe to get a little farther away from home, but where where are we and and what are we doing and how forward? Chris and I went back and forth about how to organize the book that didn't exist yet because if it were going to exist, it would have to have some sort of structure. Right? And you start to immediately have to make choices.
Susan Tacent:
11:22
And so we came up with something very basic, which Lucy had been teaching me over and over again. And, Maggie, you've read it beautifully before. It's those six needs that every living creature requires, which is air, food, water, shelter, room to move, and each other. Those became the six sections. And then we asked Lucy to find animals, creatures, vertebrates, invertebrates, birds, sea creatures, land creatures, and we asked her to find articles for that.
Susan Tacent:
11:51
And then the writers were asked to choose what topic, what what need they wanted, and then we would send them an article.
Christopher Kondrich:
11:58
Yeah. I mean, I think that the collection and that the work that we did on this collection is is certainly attempting to curate the kind of conversation that I think that we need to be having as one species on this planet of millions of species. And that is not only how do we take care of other species, but how are the needs of other species interconnected? So, yeah, I'd love to hear from you, Lucy, a little bit about your your thought process about selecting the articles. You know, as we know, the crises that species are facing are myriad, are innumerable.
Christopher Kondrich:
12:34
You know, it's hard to think about one problem without having to grapple with all the other problems that are related. And, you know, it it it often feels daunting, especially for people who are concerned about biodiversity in this world. You know, another related question is in terms of, you know, picking these articles, we're picking what is the creative work gonna be coming out of? What is it that we wanna shed light on? Right?
Christopher Kondrich:
12:59
What do we think is important out of all of the different research that's that's out there and Scott that's coming out, you know, every single day?
Lucy Spelman:
13:08
Yeah. So I think in terms of the basic needs and the the selecting of the papers, what I I remember, Chris and Susan, you guys setting up a meeting with me and being very excited about, we we know how to organize the book. And I was thrilled. I teach. I'm in now my fourteenth year teaching, biology to art and design students at Rhode Island School of Design.
Lucy Spelman:
13:28
And what I where I usually begin is our biology connects us. Right? We are all animals, and we all need those same basic things. And yet humans are the dominant species, right? So in general, we control those resources and it's, that's really the crux of this.
Lucy Spelman:
13:45
Like, it's really up to us whether we are all going to have clean air or clean water, whether we're going to have even our own species room to move each other. So that is for me as trained in biology and then trained in geological medicine and then applying that work in conservation and in teaching and in my own writing, it's really that idea that it's, it's really beautifully simple. If I'm not healthy in my world, if I don't have air, food, water, shelter, room to move in each other, then the animals in my environment also don't. Right? And it works the other way.
Lucy Spelman:
14:20
If the animals have those things or I can take steps to help those animals have what they need, then I'm, I'm much more likely to have what I need. So I see the health of everything is connected and how also if we you know, because everything's connected, any small move in the wrong direction sets off a ripple, right? A chain reaction that is not good. And that's that's largely what humans have been doing, a lot of negative ripples. And we have to at least stop the ripple to stop things from getting worse.
Lucy Spelman:
14:52
And we can actually move those reactions forward because everything's connected, right? Because if I make the soil in my yard healthier, I'm going to have more earthworms or, and and and monarch butterflies. And, you know, it's that's the optimistic view that we can take advantage of the fact that our shared needs connect us. It's so fundamental. It's so obvious in a way.
Lucy Spelman:
15:15
But it also, as we were describing the work of Creature Conserved, it's just the beginning of a pathway. It's a place to begin. So when Chris and Susan said, let's organize the book this way, I was like, okay. So I could look for I mean, there's so much scientific literature, right? But I could pick species, animal species in The US that are in trouble and look for recent papers that just focus on one of those needs.
Lucy Spelman:
15:41
Maybe just even the title is the focus because, you know, when you go read about any animal and it's and what's happening to it, again, we're all connected. So all of those potential problems, whether that's climate change or pollution of the water or not enough room to not a no corridor left for the animal to move from one place to the other. Every summary of a problem is gonna touch on all of those needs. But science is about honing down and picking getting very specific. And and that's also kind of the opportunity.
Lucy Spelman:
16:10
It's like, well, if we really look at how this lizard is being impacted by this wind farm, what is really happening? And if you can really understand what's happening, then you can pinpoint that part of the chain. Right? Okay. This is about the wind is changing the humidity and it's changing how this creature lives.
Lucy Spelman:
16:28
And then you can think about, well, what can we do about it? That was the first criteria. And the second criteria was, yeah, variety of creatures. And the third one was, you know, and I teach non scientists how to go through science papers. Like it has to be a readable paper, some scientific papers, just the way they're formatted, the way they look on the page, they're just really hard to get through.
Lucy Spelman:
16:48
So a little bit of it was like, there's so much great science out there as a scientist, but it's, it's hidden, right? It's in technical language, either in a journal or publicly available as all the papers we used. But it's, it's hidden in that we aren't accessing it. It's not something that we would naturally go to. We meaning the non scientist community.
Lucy Spelman:
17:07
And even in my community, like, science has lots of of silos within it. We don't all read each other's science. So I some of the papers just had to be readable. And there were several cases where Chris or Susan were like, yeah, this paper's not doing it. It's just either the animal wasn't quite interesting enough or, like, I think there was one time, Chris, where we were like, do we do this animal or that animal?
Lucy Spelman:
17:28
It's like so that was fun because we wanted the writers to be excited. But at the same time, it is actually limitless. The possibilities are limitless. And as Susan said, we picked American Species because we the two of you guys really felt like we can pull in the American writers. But the book is honestly is a template for the same book picking 40 species in East Africa or in Australia, you know, or in Europe and pulling people together and looking at what's happening.
Lucy Spelman:
18:00
It wasn't hard to pick the science, but I think it was a specific effort. It helped. It helped to say, we want to, have this rubric, if you will. And I think at that point, we had no idea how well it was gonna work.
Susan Tacent:
18:15
Yeah. Can I jump in there? Because I just wanna talk to the writers who we queried and who said yes. Just think for a minute what Lucy just said about lizard and humidity and wind farm. Little light bulbs go off in the writer's mind and head and heart because that's a story.
Susan Tacent:
18:33
That's a poem. That's that's material that we non scientists wouldn't have had access to. And suddenly we have this bit of information that is kind of mind blowing and important, and we've got something to work with, and we realize we have something to say. We have character. We have plot.
Susan Tacent:
18:48
We have setting. We have conflict. We have potential solution. We have understanding. It's the perfect mix of ingredients for a story or a poem to come out.
Susan Tacent:
18:57
I knew that. I knew that from teaching in person that that was gonna happen every time somebody got an article that they wouldn't have accessed otherwise, and then they knew what section they were in. And I was also, Lucy, thinking about when when there was one time where you changed a creature from air to water or something, and so, you know, things got moved around. It was exciting to ask you for articles and to know that we were gonna get the good science back.
Christopher Kondrich:
19:23
Yeah. I I'll just say that the poets I reached out to were just some whose work inspires me and who I knew were already thinking about the way in which poetry can cultivate civic engagement and how can how, you know, how they that poetic space can be a space of civic engagement, whose work was already sort of thinking about the role that poetry can play in culture and society, and what can poets and poems already you know, what can they take on as artists and citizens and private individuals? And so these things were on my mind. I did not know what was going to be coming back or the ways in which the poems were going to be, you know, engaging with the science, whether through form, you know, Sean Hill's poem comes to mind, or it's through sound and syntax, the, you know, Helenie Siclianos' poem comes to mind, whether poems were going to be innovating, you know, in terms of form, and language, or working with perceived forms like, you know, Crick's Endos Peros' sonnets. I was surprised by what came back and heartened because I knew what these poets and writers were doing was the work of deriving truth from fact, Thinking about, you know, the facts that were in the paper and doing the work that all writers, all artists do, and that is to think about how to distill those facts into a truth, you know, that that's in the art that's going to move people, that's going to stir people towards further thought and and action.
Christopher Kondrich:
20:54
So I was deeply moved and surprised by what contributors were able to to write and and deeply inspiring and and, honestly, deeply grateful these contributors were able to do this really important work. And, you know, I I'm just so excited to share this collection with readers because I think that they're going to be deeply inspired by this collaboration between literature and science. And, you know, and and like you were saying, Lucy, you know, maybe this is a template. I'm hoping that it inspires people to think about how cross disciplinary work can not only be a driver for the positive social and political change, but also can be a really great opportunity for writers.
Susan Tacent:
21:36
Yeah. I'm gonna I'm gonna add to that. It is it is an opportunity, and we were grateful. Every time a piece came back, and they came back pretty quickly, we we didn't have to chase too many people down. It was like having a birthday every day.
Susan Tacent:
21:49
You know? Look what came in look what came this. It was so exciting to see the names of these writers and poets that you admire and that you admire usually from afar, and then you get an email from them with new writing that it was not been published, that was inspired by an article that you sent that Lucy curated about a creature that they hadn't thought about ever probably in their life before and certainly not in those terms. And then, you know, to know intuitively and then realize that we were putting together a workbook or a journal for people because the wonderful folks at University of Minnesota Press designed this book in ways that we could not have dreamt up ourselves. And we are so excited about the look of it from cover to cover and everything inside.
Susan Tacent:
22:34
It's just this perfect balance of the writing, the science, the illustrations, the categories. It's really a dream come true from a design point of view, and it's got places where a reader could write in it. And it it's because of the way it's set up, you could pick up the book anywhere and read about, say, all the creatures that live in the sky before you went back to and you could go through it that way or you could go through it by only sea creatures. Or you could read the science excerpt and then write your own piece and then read what somebody else did, which is pretty exciting to do from a creative writing point of view and from a writing workshop point of view, but also just from an interacting with the science and the creativity and your own planet. There's some creature for everybody in there.
Susan Tacent:
23:26
You know, we've all seen some of them or we've heard of some of them. And what a gift to hear about one that you didn't know about or to find out how this works or how a respiratory system in a creature works that isn't a human creature. I still am amazed that there was a time before the book existed. We have hard copies in our hands, so we know it's real. You know, from those very first, yes, I would love to do that, like, I wrote to Charles Baxter.
Susan Tacent:
23:52
Baxter. He's become a friend, so it was like, dear Charlie, will you do this? And he said, yes. And I said, well, what category do you want? And he said, you pick.
Susan Tacent:
24:01
And I said, okay. And I picked air, and I picked an article about fireflies, and I sent it to him. And the next day, he wrote back, dear Susan, you sent me fireflies, and this is what happened. And there was this beautiful page and a half long piece, and it opens the book, and it's just magnificent. Annie Hartnett, we sent her polar bears, and she said, oh, no.
Susan Tacent:
24:26
I was hoping not to get polar bears. And I said, I know, but you could do it. And she wrote this gorgeous story about a co an elderly couple and who's the wife doesn't want to upset the husband, so she cuts articles out of the paper before she gives it to him to read. And, you know, she did it. She did the polar bear justice, and that's the thing, you know, because we were fortunate enough to be able to contact writers who are so talented and and have so much investment in the survival of this planet.
Susan Tacent:
24:56
We got back beautiful pieces, you know, with a lot of heart. It's just like watching some amazing seed that you planted and looking out the window, and there's this garden there that is just thriving and diverse and healthy and hopeful.
Lucy Spelman:
25:13
Yes. Susan, I you know, I think something we've all the three of us have talked about and kind of the core at Creature Conserv is that this is a tough topic. Right? Wildlife populations all over the world are declining, and the reason is us. Right?
Lucy Spelman:
25:25
Human impacts are causing this. It is a mass extinction, and it's not easy to think about or feel. Distilling truth from fact, finding your own way to connect with this this topic. You know, the science can say x number of polar bears, this is what's gonna happen. The science can predict the climate change, but it's really the art that lets us internalize that and connect with it and taps into our emotions and our subconscious.
Lucy Spelman:
25:53
And, you know, it also gives the problem, if you will, context. You know, we all have different cultures, different life experience. We spend different amounts of time in nature from, you know, almost none to a lot. And so those those are all things that affect how you deal with this topic. For me, the book has a similar potential impact as the exhibitions that we put on at Creature Conserved.
Lucy Spelman:
26:14
As you mentioned, we started our first programs were bringing visual artists together to learn from, scientists and other experts in conservation. And we've had four major exhibits now, 30 or 40 visual artists making work around a topic, learning from experts, spending time in the field, you know, different amounts of science. That's all great. But when you would watch people come into the exhibit, it's a lot to take in 40 artworks around how we conflict with urban wildlife or how we use animals in the wildlife trade or even just the fact that we have this thing that is extinction happening. And people would just be drawn to one or two pieces, maybe three.
Lucy Spelman:
26:50
You know, we all have a different aesthetic. We're all feeling differently on a given day. And to have the choice to say, yeah, I wanna watch this short film, or I wanna just go up to that sculpture and hang out with it. Or in this case, I just I just want to take in one poem. I think this is really important that we all have choices.
Lucy Spelman:
27:08
That's what I was alluding to before in our pathways. It doesn't have to always be all in front of us at every moment. But we do need to have ways that we can engage with this topic. We could say that the science, the knowledge that says we're animals too, and we need a healthy planet. Right?
Lucy Spelman:
27:26
That's pure science. But what helps us take that in and make it feel real, and make us maybe wanna make a different decision about how we live our lives and the impact we have on the planet, it's really through the arts. And, you know, artists have always been interpreters of our time, whether that's music or performance, writing. And this is, again, if the book is a template or a prompt, as Susan was saying, or for a classroom or anyone. The more and more and more and more this engagement with our relationship with other animals and the fact that we can put our finger on a spot in that chain reaction and make a decision about whether we want to change the outcome, I think it becomes a lot more just part of day to day life and rather than some big challenge that somebody else is gonna solve.
Lucy Spelman:
28:12
I think we were talking earlier about, you know, the subcategories, what's causing extinction, right? They're huge. Climate change, you know, resource extraction, habitat loss, global trade, emerging diseases, the way we farm, the way we hunt. Even those are just big, big categories. And it's it's easier to just start somewhere much more specific like that lizard or any of the other or the polar bear.
Lucy Spelman:
28:38
And I think we are fascinated with what the experience was of the writers who participated because the process is is more important, really. We can engage and we can think about this together and we can make a little shift in our behavior together. And that's what that's what Creature Conserv is all about, is supporting that process and helping people who've never done this before and never thought about bringing art and science together or even taking in something that's art and science together. Just saying, Hey, come see. This is a new way to engage with this topic.
Lucy Spelman:
29:09
It's hard. It's hard work. And the writing is so beautiful. And again, I sit as the scientist, not as the one with that amazing talent of our writers or the visual artists. I'm always fascinated with what that process is like and how they went from that science to the actual writing piece.
Christopher Kondrich:
29:26
Well, you know, we get bombarded with information on a daily basis, and even the most passionate and dedicated of us are taking in information on such a regular basis, we move on from it. We go about our day having learned something, whether it's the science that we're learning about species or issues that are climate change related, we move on. And I'm, you know, thinking about this title, creature needs, what these creatures need is for us to not move on. In order for us to actually grapple with the issues and these squeeze questions of our impact, in order to actually make the policy and and social changes that we need to make. And, you know, I think that that's what they really need.
Christopher Kondrich:
30:11
And, you know, I, for one, need the writers in these collections to help me remember, to move me, because I, you know, I can't move on from an incredible poem. I can't move on from a story or a beautifully written lyric essay. The information that is conveyed through literature is something that stays with me, and it's much harder for me to shake it if it stirs me, if it moves me. What I really appreciate about this collection is that you read the science, and then that science is integrated into the literature that is there too, and the literature by our extraordinary contributors makes it stick so that you can't shake it. The other thing that I wanted to say is that it's just really important to me for there to be aesthetic diversity, for there to be diversity across, the voices of of writers and lived experiences that are collected in, you know, in this book because it's gonna be even more difficult to shake off a poem or a story from one page to the next as you're reading the collection if they're coming at it from from all different aesthetic directions.
Christopher Kondrich:
31:22
I think that that's what makes this book so incredibly dynamic, but also really important, is that we have such diversity of voices and of writers that are helping this information really be be unshakable.
Susan Tacent:
31:36
Yeah. We worked hard to ensure that diversity for those reasons that Chris has just delineated so beautifully. And at some point, wanted to say somewhere in the book, this is not an anthology. We settled on the word collection. We love the polyvocal call for change that Minnesota came up with.
Susan Tacent:
31:55
It's a map in a way of the writers and poets who live all over the country and travel all over the world. It's a map of the creatures who are featured, examined, considered, responded to in the book. One of the things I love about it is the idea that until each contributor has read the entire book, they only see their tiny little piece of the map. And until a reader comes to the book and reads the entire book, they've only seen one tiny little piece of the map. And to go back to creature conserves emphasis on connection and how we are all connected and how we are all animals, humans, and, you know, rhinoceroses and octopuses, all same six needs pretty much in different, you know, doses, I guess.
Susan Tacent:
32:48
When we see that map fill in, even though it's just part of the planet, it's still going to give the clearest picture that I can think of off the top of my head of what we're facing and how interconnected everything is and what needs to be done. Because, again, as Chris and Lucy have been saying, because we are getting at it from not only the science, but also the intellect and the heart because some of these pieces have an emotional component to them. Some of them have an intellectual you know, they they have all the the good stuff that we want in our literature. Once we experience that, I think there is a deeper understanding and perhaps a willingness to slow down and to figure out ways to help rather than run away or hide or simply cry, which on any given day is not a terrible response, but is not going to ultimately get us to where we want to be.
Lucy Spelman:
33:47
Yes. I I was just going to echo both of what you guys said and that we all have creatures that are proximal to us. Like, what creature did you see today? Did you think twice about how its day went? You know?
Lucy Spelman:
33:58
It's okay that we're we are human, so we are social creatures, and we are thinking about each other. But we're also a visual species. We see creatures, and we really are purposely not engaging with them when we see, let's say, a squirrel or a robin if we're here in the Northeast. But what if you did engage? Right?
Lucy Spelman:
34:17
And Susan, that's one of the, exercises we do with one of our teaching workshops is the prompt, if I have this right, Susan is, you know, pick an animal that you saw on your way to the to to this workshop or you saw in the morning of the workshop and imagine what was happening to it at that moment. And I think that may seem just very esoteric, but it's it's a step toward feeling that connection and sharing, yeah, your own existence with a nonhuman animal. Hanging out with creatures is not for just for kids. Right? It helps us as adults and the book as much as we hope everybody of every age reads it.
Lucy Spelman:
34:52
But it this is for us, those of us who are making decisions on a day to day basis about how we wanna use our resources. And I think animals are a way in, and it can be fascinating. Curiosity, being open, being curious, and being present. Right? If you're if you're open and curious and present about nature around you in the moment, you can manage that.
Lucy Spelman:
35:14
If you start to think about it, all of it all at once, it can be too much.
Susan Tacent:
35:18
Yeah. I I ran into a local contributor, and I asked Jody what Jody Vinton, what was it like to write about owls? And she she had a a bunch of answers that I thought were wonderful, but one of the things she said is she'll never forget the, idea of the owls wearing tiny little backpacks they were fitted with so that they could be part of a research experiment. And so now, of course, I now picture owls with tiny little backpacks, and I get to think about that. And then I get to think about what would an owl be?
Susan Tacent:
35:46
What were they looking for? What were the science questions? And what did they find out. It piques my curiosity. It piques my creative impulse.
Susan Tacent:
35:53
And and, Lucy, the writing exercise, we developed that for urban wildlife, the workshop on urban wildlife learning to coexist. And we asked them, so who'd you meet on your way in? Was it a squirrel? Was it a hawk? Was it a crow?
Susan Tacent:
36:06
You know, was it a snail? And then we asked them to write, you know, what do you think they were up to? And what would you ask them? If you could speak to them, what would you ask them, and what would you wish for them? And, you know, you're in a room full of people who self selected to take this workshop, and so you know that it's really easy to make them cry by telling them a sad story about animals.
Susan Tacent:
36:27
It's really easy to make them say awe and laugh if you tell them kind of a funny story about animals because animals are endlessly amusing. And it's really easy to make them care because they already care. It was just a room full of, like, sparkling responses and and people talking amongst themselves about what creatures they saw. And just also asking them to think about and after the workshops, asking people to go outside and interact a little bit. And, you know, the book is gonna do that too.
Susan Tacent:
36:55
It's I hope it's gonna give impetus toward engaging, which is what we're really talking about here in a way. Right?
Christopher Kondrich:
37:01
Yeah. This conversation about what what the creative work in this collection is doing, you know, sort of, gearing us towards the present, makes me think of this excellent essay, by Chelsea Steiner or Scudder that was published in Emergence magazine called The Lord God Bird. And she writes at one point, quote, what if we didn't jump straight into resignation, but turned away from a future ending and toward the present, toward that which is immediately around us? Perhaps this is the real work to be done here now. You know, and I think that that's kind of what this this collection is doing because there is the solution.
Christopher Kondrich:
37:39
This collection is very much interested in trying to seek out solutions that the science is offering us. And part of that solution is becoming rooted in the present that is immediately around us through the creative work. There's this writer whose work I really love, Jedidiah Purdy, and he asks a question in an essay. His essay is called Thinking Like a Mountain, and it was published in n plus one. And, this question that I I keep thinking about, you know, year in and year out after I've read it, he writes, what is looking back at us through other species' eyes?
Christopher Kondrich:
38:18
Could we ever escape our own heads and know the viewpoint of a hawk? Is there such a thing as thinking like a mountain? The way I think about these questions is could we ever escape our own heads and know the viewpoint of a hawk? Of course not. Of course not.
Christopher Kondrich:
38:39
But I think that the act of trying is really important because it helps us to deemphasize the human centeredness that I think is at the root and cause of biodiversity loss, the anthropocentrism that's at the root of of the myriad crises facing all these species. I think we have to try. I don't think anybody is going to read a novel that's in the voice of a hawk and actually believe that that novel is capturing exactly what the consciousness of a hawk is like. But that is an act of empathy that is integral, that is deeply compassionate and essential to living equitably on a planet of million species. So that's how I think about that question.
Christopher Kondrich:
39:34
I I don't know. I would I would love love to hear your response to the to the party quote.
Susan Tacent:
39:40
Yeah. It's also willingness to walk across the divide, the apparent divide. Right? To take a step over that line that we think is there that we that we don't realize that we're drawing and that is perhaps a false boundary.
Lucy Spelman:
39:54
Yeah. I agree with that. But I think it's also about creating space to learn what it's like to be a hawk or a mountain and then to share empathy
Christopher Kondrich:
40:02
or
Lucy Spelman:
40:02
express empathy. And then what ideas come from that, right? It's that idea that it's accessible to all of us. We're all part of nature. And I think it that quote goes beyond we're all animals.
Lucy Spelman:
40:13
It goes we're all part of nature. Right? We are as much of nature as a mountain is. So I find it, you know, this is sounds so simple again, but if we begin there, okay, yeah, we are part of that mountain and we have a stake in whether that mountain persists or not. And that's the beginning of feeling empowered.
Lucy Spelman:
40:35
We can't imagine exactly what that hawk is seeing, but we could try. That puts us in the present and empowers us to feel like we can participate in even just the knowing, not necessarily the solving of a problem. Right? In wildlife conservation and in in any big sort of effort, societal effort to solve a big problem, it can be overwhelming. Again, we talked about this earlier.
Lucy Spelman:
40:57
And I think it can be so overwhelming that it feels like that's somebody else's job, then nothing happens, or it feels like there's a prescribed way of behaving. And I think what I love about, this quote and the book and exhibits that we support at Creature Goods or really all of the programs we support is it's not prescriptive. There is no one way. There is no this is how you do, this is how you help wildlife. We're all here on this planet where there's many, many ways and we can all make a choice and find that path.
Lucy Spelman:
41:27
I have one question for Chris and Susan again, just thinking about as the book comes out and we are excited to organize with with the University of Minnesota Press some book launches and some readings. What do you guys think or hope will happen once the book is out there?
Susan Tacent:
41:44
I hope they all join hands and start a revolution, but that's just a fantasy. We don't know what it was like for them. We only know what we got back from them. It's an opportunity to let the book continue to do its work, I think, for people, right, and for creatures. So I think it's just, again, just the beginning of this magic garden that we've planted and that they've planted, and I think it's gonna be amazing.
Christopher Kondrich:
42:09
I, for one, am I'm really looking forward to this book being out in the world, and and, of course, to the events that that contributors I can be having. But, of course, I mean, I'm I'm I'm I really want this to actually do have an impact. And what I'm I'm hoping that this book will inspire people to think about are the ways in which biodiversity loss and and the the the challenges that species are facing, that it's it's happening all around us. It's local. I'm hoping that that this collection will inspire folks to find out ways in which they can be of some use in their local ecosystem, in their local community.
Lucy Spelman:
42:52
Yeah. I could add to that, Chris, because I think at at Creature Conserv, we talk a lot about that pathway is not a short term. Sometimes it's it can take months to years to find that way in. Right? So I think the expectation that I have is start somewhere.
Lucy Spelman:
43:07
I think that's what you're saying. It's the book as a starting point. The call is wildlife populations are declining. The response is creature needs. The response is let's say, hey, we can all try something new.
Lucy Spelman:
43:18
We can combine art and science. We can find our way into this topic. So it's an invitation to respond in a way that makes sense to whoever you are. And again, it has there's no prescription other than, you know, right here, right now, we we need to do something. And there's so many ways, so many things you can do.
Susan Tacent:
43:37
Yeah. Lucy and and and, Chris, I think the science and that the science is not over our heads, and it's not out of reach, and it's not going to hurt us. And we can access it, and we can use it to help. And it can activate us, motivate us, inform us.
Narrator:
43:57
This has been a University of Minnesota Press production. The book, Creature Needs, Writers Respond to the Science of Animal Conservation is available from University of Minnesota Press. Thank you for listening.
