Amanda Earl : Insects and Gerberas: Survival and Celebration in the Sweet Unknown

 

 

 

avantacular press published a field guide to fanciful bugs on Scribd in 2010. It was my second visual poetry chapbook, following Montparnasse (this is visual poetry, chapbook publisher, 2010). I had been making visual poetry since 2005 but had only recently started to use Photoshop. I remember making elementary pieces I was unsatisfied with and then redoing them as I learned more about how to use the software to do freaky things it wasn’t made for. Now I’m using Illustrator in the same way, ignoring instructions and going my own way, making mistakes and glorying in the serendipitous imperfection of the results.

To figure out when I made and submitted the visual poems for publication, I had to go through my digital drawers. I was surprised to learn that these pieces had been submitted while I was recovering from my near-death health crisis. I’ve been thinking a lot about that time while we are in (on again / off again) lockdown due to the pandemic. I had a long period of convalescence that kept me at home.  I had to deal with pain, discomfort, disorientation, weakness and fatigue for a long time and didn’t have much energy. For some reason, this work was one of the areas where I chose to expend my energies.

My health crisis took place in November 2009, so by the time I had submitted the field guide manuscript, it was a mere three or four months into my recuperation. My first thought almost twelve years later when that time is now a blur to me is that I’m surprised I had the stamina to sit at the computer to make these pieces. My second is that the play and whimsy of the work is an indication of how grateful and joyous I felt to be alive.

In an article entitled Insects are the great survivors in evolution: new study published in the Conversation in 2014, David Yeates, Director of the Australian National Insect Collection, explained that insects originated about 500 million years ago. They have survived mass extinctions and will likely “feed on the last vertebrate carcass on the planet.”

The timing of this reissue is fortuitous. It is a reminder that we still need joy and whimsy in the world, and that resilience and coping with whatever life throws at you is essential.

Field guides began as a tool to help identify flora and fauna, and this field guide is a whimsical variation on such, but I was also inspired by Rebecca Solnit’s wonderful book, A Field Guide to Getting Lost, loaned to me by Megan Butcher, a dear friend, during my health crisis. In the introduction Solnit talks about the need for artists to be comfortable with the unknown, to be able to open doors. Megan brought me this book and gerbera daisies. As well as recovering from the physical effects of my health crisis, I also needed to come to terms with and recover from the trauma of going through the experience and surviving. I often woke up with my jaw tightly clenched and my body in the fetal position. I couldn’t stand full dark at night for several months. I learned and had to come to terms with the knowledge that anything can happen to me or those I love, or anyone else for that matter, at any time. I had to learn to live with uncertainty, with the unknown.

The gerbera daisies that Megan gave me were the subject of many of my husband’s photos. He used one of his many Polaroid cameras and film by the Impossible Project to take gorgeously flawed photos of the daisies as they were dying. The photos are hanging in the living room and I love them. These flowers were beautiful in all their stages, and a reminder of the importance of vibrant colour, moments of joy, life itself. We cannot control when or how we die or experience tragedy and trauma, but we can control how we live. I intend to live the rest of my life with love and joy and whimsy.

One of my favourite songs is Could Be So Happy by the Heartless Bastards. Erika Wennerstrom sings of being restless and longing to be out in the sweet unknown. This is a longing many of us have these days, thanks to the ongoing pandemic. The sweet unknown I have longed for most of my life has to do with my imagination. I long to let my imagination travel where it wants to go. I feed it knowledge, art, culture and connection with kindred misfits, which make it thrive.

 

 

 

 

Amanda Earl (she/her) is a pansexual polyamorous cis-gendered woman in her late 50s. Her goals are love, whimsy, exploration, community-building, and connection with kindred misfits. She attempts to accomplish these through her writing and through publishing the work of others via Bywords.ca as the managing editor, and AngelHousePress as the fallen angel. Her most recent chapbook is a field guide to fanciful bugs (above/ground press, 2021). She’s the author of over thirty chapbooks published in Canada, UK, USA and Sweden. Kiki, her poetry book from Chaudiere Books is available through Invisible Publishing. Amanda also penned many a filthy story eventually published as Coming Together Presents Amanda Earl, and A World of Yes, a novel about a woman who falls asleep at her apartment during her thirty-fifth birthday party and misses an orgy.  You can read more about her health crisis in her essay, “After Survival” in the anthology Against Death: 35 Essays on Living, edited by Elee Kraljii Gardiner (Anvil Press, 2019) and in the above/ground press chapbook, Aftermath or Scenes of  a Woman Convalescing (above/ground press, 2019). Contact Amanda on Twitter @KikiFolle or read all about her here.

Photos credit: Charles Earl