I have spent the last two weeks or so focusing again on multispecies poetry. What is that? Multispecies poetry is a practice of creative writing that lets itself be informed by the agency of other animals, with dogs being my collaborators of choice because they stand to benefit most from the whole enterprise. It results in visual poems and poems that include scent - which, after all, shares a number of features with poetry (it is condensed information, it can evoke strong memories or associations etc.) - and, most importantly, it speaks to an audience that is not exclusively human.
Dog Matilda and her humans reading a sonnet in a bottle cocreated with Doktor Humphrey Stumpfkorn at ELIT 23.
I love the playfulness and openness in people and dogs I encounter through it, but it also connects with a serious interest of mine. Not just as a poet - and hence as a member of that subspecies of the human kind that is perhaps more sensitive to use of language than others - I am always struck that we talk a lot about communicating with our dogs and yet experiment so little with the languages we have available. As for our linguistic language, there is so much in the words themselves (dogs do understand more than most give them credit for), the tone we use, the rhythm, the breathing, the pauses we make (!) - all of that carries meaning and we can play around with it. (I sometimes sing old and odd songs to my dogs when out and about and find they appreciate.) But it’s not just what comes out of our mouths, it’s also what we say with our bodies, how we move through space, the moves we allow our dogs to make and the turns we take.
This is of course not news but I find there is only so much to be done about these things by writing full sentences - show, don’t tell. Yet in a conventional training session, it is also difficult to make or let this happen. How we communicate with our dogs is also something somewhat, well, intimate. I place a lot of emphasis on incorporating dog-human-interactions in the creation of the poems that are playful, guided by the dogs and exploratory, and this requires people to have the right mindset, to let loose of preconceived goals, and yes, to make themselves vulnerable. When teaching a class on loose lead walking - even thought that is ALL about communication - there is just no way the human could start to truly ask questions as to what the dog is trying to say and perhaps even sit on the answers a bit. In the production of multispecies poetry, this is all that matters.
I feel super privileged and grateful when the owners I collaborate with (and they, in turn, work with their dogs) share with me what that work has brought up for them. I love the stories of discoveries. Like, how exactly does their dog approach a novel item, using which nostril? What keeps the canine mind focussed for very long, what is considered repulsive? The delight owners take when a dog clearly signals that a particular game that was played as part of the poetry production was a rather excellent idea - to be repeated, with an eventual poem or without. Yet I also enormously appreciate stories of personal transformation or processing. Like the owner who really sits with the confusion, anger and guilt that getting a puppy had brought - and who comes to appreciate the intelligence of the little dog who is really only just learning all the time to read her human’s most subtle cues, and the human decides to become much more intentional and patient.
When I present the works, I also always have the chance to talk about how dogs perceive the world. You know, the importance of scent, the difference in colour vision etc. In a conventional training session, such information is often briefly registered at best and considered superfluous at worst. Who cares what colour the ball has or whether the pup considers the scented candles aversive if s/he is ripping up the house and biting ankles? I also stress the importance of contact lying - if the dog is up for it! - when the human does the ultimate job of putting it all into poetic form. Again, something that people and dogs are unwilling or unlikely to do in the presence of a trainer (plus you cannot allow for dogs to just walk off in a class).
Now, this is neither the future of dog training nor of poetry - I know that much. It is a playful addition to both. To be able to keep things playful and truly mutually beneficial for dog and owner, other needs have to be met as well. I always stress that I would not want to use multispecies poetry in emotional situations in which at least some of human poetry originates - rage and heartbreak, ambivalence and fears may motivate a human to pick up pen and paper, but a dog processes differently, no doubt. At the same time, some of the suggested activities as well as the mindset that is encouraged by multispecies poetry could still help to weather such storms of the canine heart and mind as well. At least that is what I hope.
Perhaps just like good dog training, multispecies poetry is as much about the process as it is about the product. I love the collaborative dimension and if you and your dog are up for it, you can find some practical guidance on my homepage. However, I trust the infinite creativity dog-human-collaboration can bring about, so don’t feel constrained by this and if you have multispecies poems you would like to share, do get in touch. I’d love to include them in the next show.
PS. If you would like to attend a show with a canine critic of yours, just follow me on Instagram, which is where I usually post about upcoming events.