In This Issue: Possibility Without Conclusion, An Interview with a Traverse City-Based Chestnut Farming Poet.

an excerpt from Possibility Without Conclusion

A Q&A with Ellen Welcker, a Traverse City-based poet living amongst chestnut trees and other creatures.

“Lake effect — all winter you have been trying to understand it. Coy lake effect, mysterious lake effect — as snow blows horizontally, as it swirls up like frozen yogurt, as it fills your nose like gold dust and puts you on hold like customer service — as it chooses its words carefully, as it senses ignorance in the room. Lake effect! Made of tiny insect meat and teratomas. Made of football cleats, the odd grocery receipt, neat encounters in which mating might-should-could occur; made of sloughed tattoos & people whispering who am I into the vast midwestern airspace — made of facts, feelings, & bitter pills. Lake effect! Apocalyptic hydraulics! You believe in it.”

(A selection from Welcker’s “Nest Pas”)

Hi Ellen, could you tell readers a bit about who you are? Like where you’re from, and what you do?

I grew up in Bend, Oregon, and have lived in the NW US most of my life. We came to Traverse City in 2020 for work reasons, and had been living in Spokane, Washington for the past decade. I am a poet, and work for the Bagley Wright Lecture Series on Poetry, a nonprofit whose mission is to support contemporary poets as they explore their own thinking on poetry and poetics, and give a series of free, public lectures resulting from these investigations. In Spokane I did a lot of community arts stuff as well — I hosted a monthly reading series in my living room, and worked with the novelist Sharma Shields to create a bunch of local literary events as “Scablands Lit,” under the umbrella of a local nonprofit.

When my husband and I moved here, we wound up on a chestnut orchard that had fallen into neglect. We’d spent about two seconds thinking about chestnuts prior to this landing. That first fall, the nuts fell, and we collected as many as we could, and it got its hooks in us. So we decided to try to learn as much as we could — about chestnuts, the local ecology, climate crisis concerns and proactive adaptations and responses — and do our best by the trees and ecosystem we find ourselves a part of here. I also wrote a lot of poems about ticks. I’m obsessed with their ability to move into and thrive in areas of ecological instability and I am also irrationally freaked out by them. Ew!!! Two long related, ticky pieces are at DIAGRAM and The Destroyer. (These poems are both called “NEST PAS” because of a No Trespassing sign I found and repurposed.) Editor’s note—shown above.

That’s how I met you, roundaboutly, because I signed on to be a part of the first season of Crosshatch’s Carbon Conservation Farming Cohort program. It was amazing to learn alongside and from people at various stages and focuses of farming through the lens of carbon conservation. It has really helped us make time for visionary thinking alongside the endless day to day work of the chestnut orchard…

…I’m curious to hear about proactive adaptations and responses — what that means and looks like for you guys, or could look like, or simply what sorts of things you have in mind.

In terms of proactive adaptations and responses — we’re learning as we go, and we definitely have beginner’s mind about all this. Joy Harjo says in her poem, “Deer Dancer,” “in this language there are no words for how the real world collapses.” I feel like I keep reiterating how I don’t know what I’m doing, and in part that is just because there are so many people I am learning from and so much I still don’t know, that I would hate to come off sounding like anything but a newb…but I also mean, dominant American culture wants answers, and I have none. I refuse to pretend I have them. I can only acknowledge my deep, deep not-knowing. In the face of the very real world collapsing, my language, the language of colonization and domination and manifest destiny, fails me — fails us — and of course it does. How could it not?

I think this is also tied to my poetics. I am interested in bewilderment, not as something shameful or tied to ignorance, but as a way of being alive to the world — attuned to its joys, beauties, and horrors. (Also, just the idea of “being wilderness.” Of course I want to.) Bewilderment it is anti-hierarchical, open, unbridled, gaseous. My poetics is concerned with the mutability of borders and boundaries real and imagined, imposed and inherent. I’m striving to grapple with what we are, what forms our self-conceptions, and how we move through the world within and often outside of our containers (built by language and culture and influenced by racism, sexism, economics and other power hierarchies, and often excluding — and to the detriment of — ecology and non-human beings). Poetry can help us rearticulate ourselves on a cellular level. It makes changes to our brains and nervous systems so that we meet the world more able to fully be in it. Poetry, with its affinity for mystery and multiple readings, to create and engender possibility without conclusion — allows both poet and reader to move through a state of bewilderment, to plumb the depths of not-knowing, to grow deeply, truly bewildered.

Standing down from my soapbox now…to try to more directly answer your question: seeing how others are stewarding and thinking and gesturing toward the future in the face of climate emergencies gives me hope and releases me from the occasional paralysis of not-knowing (a danger!). It allows for a way of being that is actively communal, future-centric, and against the hoarding of resources, the drawing of lines around having and not-having. Carbon-farming is one aspect of this ever-evolving practice. One small thing will be getting rid of the autumn olive, with the help of our goats (who love to eat them), which will create an opportunity to plant trees in anticipation of a warmer climate, like what the Assisted Tree Range Expansion Project does. I know there will be so much more, so much still veiled by my current not-knowing!…

Click Here to Read the Whole Interview

Click Here to Read the Rest of Nest Pas

The Warp — Ideas and Inspiration

|| 1 || As of last night, All Illusions Must Be Broken has reached its funding goals. The documentary draws from the application of anthropologist Ernest Becker’s work to the modern social and ecological landscape, and if you aren’t familiar with Becker (I’m not), well, maybe the movie will be a helpful primer. I do know it’s from the folks behind Look and See: A Portrait of Wendell Berry, so I venture to guess it’ll be worth paying attention to. Look and See, you might remember, screened at the Elk Rapids Cinema at an event put on by Crosshatch and the Au Sable Institute.

I heard about All Illusions Must Be Broken through Austin Kleon’s link-heavy weekly newsletter. The combination of the messaging amongst the medium draws out a familiar tension—All Illusions calls for consideration of the dislocating impact of screens and the digital world, but how did I hear about it? Screens and the digital world. And how am I sharing about it? Screens and the digital world.

Is an invitation to watch something on a screen about the negative impacts of screen-watching hypocritical? I don’t think so. But it does invite care and discernment.

Austin Kleon’s emails offer something infinite. If you tried to follow all of the paths of digital exploration, you could click and browse ad infinitum. There’s too much for any one person to exhaust.

It’s the same with this newsletter. The beauty is that there’s zero obligation to aim for exhaustion. Follow whatever resonates, if anything. And then get out in the snow with your kids, listen to the podcast at work while scribbling little notes, ask the brewery host what they do with spent grains, etc. Let the application to the modern social and ecological landscape develop wherever you are. That’s not straight-forward. But it is a template for openness to mystery, engagement, and bewilderment in whatever circumstances you’re in—which is what much of Ellen Welcker’s Q&A and All Illusions Must Be Broken are all about.

|| 2 || In the full interview, Ellen writes:

“When my husband and I moved here, we wound up on a chestnut orchard that had fallen into neglect. We’d spent about two seconds thinking about chestnuts prior to this landing. That first fall, the nuts fell, and we collected as many as we could, and it got its hooks in us.”

That reminds me of a 1986 Jerry Dennis note:

“In Michigan woods—beechnut scent and crushed ferns, the stink of swamp and raw loam. Squirrels rustle in the leaves. Angle of sunlight so clearly a northern autumn. Breeze, then stillness. The approach of winter has me excited beyond reasoning. Our days diminish. Nights grow cold. We gather what nuts we can.”

Jerry will be sharing soon here in Bellaire—there’s a workshop geared specifically towards creating short essays based on personal experience, as well as a reading from and discussion of Dennis’ Up North In Michigan: A Portrait of Place in Four Seasons. Here’s a teaser—when asked in a Q&A with FLOW, Jerry shared that the book, and all of his works, have been guided by the following 1988 passage:

“Write the book you want to read. An honest book. A spacious book. A book that resonates like bells. That is as informative as waves breaking on gravel. That has beach stones and wind in it. Water stains, gull keen. Sand. Silence. A book that asks instead of answers. An open book. A ventilated book. A pristine flowing spring of a book.

A book that remembers on every page that everything is temporary. All else will follow from there.”

All else will follow from there. Hope to see you in February!

The Weft — News and Events

We’re heartened by a wide-range of expressions of resilient communities and gatherings. Here’s a smattering of regional events and happenings that reflect that diversity, collected for your consideration. Choose your own adventure!

|| 1 || As this year’s Long Memory Project: Pride draws closer, Crosshatch is seeking community elders to tell their stories. If you have a story you’d like to tell, any 2SLGBTQ members ages 55+ are encouraged to apply online. Find more information here.

|| 2 || Farming With Climate Change: Film and Discussion Series. In this mostly online course, we will create a learning group for farmers and supportive community members to discuss available resources and how they might use those resources in their own farms. The first meeting will be on location at NCMC in Petoskey on January 18th to view and discuss the film “The Ant and the Grasshopper.” The last meeting on Feb. 15th will be a hybrid meeting, with both online and in-person options. Find more information, and register, here.

|| 3 || Winter Gathering XVII at Wagbo Farm and Education Center, in East Jordan, MI. From 1pm on Friday, January 19th to 1pm on Sunday, January 21st—a difficult-to-pin-down bioregional gathering. Think community care, ecology, craft, a clothing swap, live music, deep dive discussions, potlucks, fire, and plenty of time in the elements. Free, but donations welcome. Find more information, including a schedule, at the Wagbo Facebook page.

|| 4 || The Antrim Writers Series: Write Here, Write Now.

Author Reading and Discussion with Jerry Dennis on Up North In Michigan: A Portrait of Place in Four Seasons. 7pm at Bee Well, Bellaire, MI, on February 6th.

Non-fiction Writing Workshop with Jerry Dennis, 2:30-4:30pm on February 7th, at the Forest Home Township Hall.

|| 5 || National Writers Series: Workshops and Classes for Students in Northern Michigan and beyond. Find information and register here for offerings like Poetry with David Hornibrook (5th-8th grade, Elk Rapids and online), and Literary Short Story with Karin Killian (9th-12th grade, at Commongrounds and online.) Classes are free, while space is limited.

|| 6 || Michigan Food & Farming Systems. MIFFS’ Farm Business Management for the Global Majority online course is now open for registration. This course invites Black, Indigenous, Latinx, Southeast Asian, New Immigrant/New American, and all farmers of Color to join this learning series in 2024. We are affirming and recognizing that these groups that have been historically oppressed are the global majority. Increase your expertise in keeping farm records, improve your knowledge of past and current inequities and barriers in farming, and increase your skills in decision-making and navigating these systems so that all farms and farmers can be successful. Register here.

|| 7 || Northwest Michigan Herb Guild Event: Infusion Confusion? Saturday, January 13th, 2-3:30pm, followed by a Buy/Sell/Swap from 3:30-4pm, at MSUE Grand Traverse, 520 Front St., Traverse City, MI. Join us to learn more about infusions, how to make them, and why. There will be a plant focus on the Asteraceae Family, in particular, Echinacea spp. Please bring your own infusions and be prepared to share! Call or text Patti at 231-492-5002 with any questions.

|| 8 || Registration for the 20th Annual Michigan Family Farms Conference (MFFC) is now open. Happening March 9, 2024 at KVCC in Kalamazoo, MI, the MFFC offers beginning, small-scale, and culturally diverse farmers a chance to network, learn, and build sustainable family farms. It is an energizing, hands-on event featuring multiple tracks of breakout sessions plus a youth track to engage the whole family. Learn more & register here.

|| 9 || Happenings at The Alluvion Between Now and the Next Whole Field include: Jeff Haas Trio with Laurie Sears and Lisa Flahive, Mindful + Musical with Miriam Pico, Waterbed, DJ Ras Marco, Building Bridges with Music’s MLK Day Celebration, Here:Say Storytelling, Funky Uncle, and Expand Storytelling.

Find more information at www.thealluvion.org.

|| 10 || MSU Extension’s Sustainability Speakers Series Spring 2024. Bicycle trailer food scrap collection, household food waste, effective recycling practices, and more. Find information on the upcoming virtual “lunch and learns” February through May here.

|| 11 || Applications are still open for the 2024 Food & Farming Microloans.

Supported by Oryana Community Co-op, Grain Train Natural Foods Market, and the Kalkaska Economic Development Corporation, these loans support new and developing food and farming businesses, helping our region’s food system become more vibrant and resilient. These zero-interest loans are available in quantities from $500 to $10,000, and can be utilized for land, livestock, equipment, distribution, marketing, certification, and so much more.

Applications are due on February 7th, and are open to farmers and food producers in Antrim, Benzie, Charlevoix, Cheboygan, Emmet, Grand Traverse, Kalkaska, Leelanau, Manistee, Missaukee, Otsego, and Wexford counties. It is free to apply. More info available here.