Mobi Warren, a local educator and master naturalist, leads monthly Haiku Hikes through the inspirational terrain at Government Canyon State Natural Area. As an environmental activist/poet, she has organized poetry readings at Mitchell Lake Audubon Center and at Luminaria 2010. Warren is also an experienced workshop facilitator who loves to weave observations of the natural world into everyday happenings.
Warren will teach the class, Dawn and Dusk: Crepuscular Writing, during Gemini Ink’s Summer Literary Festival. The class will take place July 18th-20th at Government Canyon State Natural Area and Gemini Ink. At the state park, class participants will hike at dawn and dusk, create journal entries about their experiences, and then, craft their journal entries into poems at Gemini Ink.
Gemini Ink intern Iris Ayala interviewed Warren about her upcoming class, the relationship between nature and art, her favorite poem about nature, and the current state of the environment.
After reading your interview with Denise Gamino from the Austin American-Statesman, I learned that you lead a haiku hike once a month. If any, what elements will you use from the haiku hike for the Dawn and Dusk: Crepuscular Writing class?
The thing that people who come on Haiku Hikes always say they appreciate the most is the silence. I have participants hike at a very slow pace, no talking allowed, in order to allow the windows of the senses to fully open. Silence is like a pair of binoculars — you suddenly notice details that are very surprising. The Crepuscular Writing workshop will utilize the same elements of hiking and silence, but I’ll also be sharing writing prompts I don’t use on Haiku Hikes, and we’ll be paying special attention to how the quality of light affects our sense of being, our imaginations, and the rhythms of our writing.
What is it about the crepuscular time that interests you? Have you explored the time between dawn and dusk before?
I’m a runner and my favorite time to run is early in the morning, because the gradual shift from dark to dawn feeds my spirit in a way nothing else does. For the same reason, my favorite time to take walks is at dusk. The blending of light and dark, the brief overlap of day and night evokes peace and reflection. I’m better able to listen to myself during crepuscular interludes.
From a naturalist perspective, how would you explain the relationship between nature and the inspiration to write or create art? When writing poems about nature, do you think writers are simply trying to make sense of nature or is it much deeper than that?
I would say that the inspiration to write or create is itself a force of nature, a sign that one is in “right relationship” to the ground of our being. That ground of being can’t be separated from the natural world, from the long trajectory of earth’s history, from the laws of physics. I personally find it very helpful to get out of the city from time to time in order to hike and sit in a wildscape like Government Canyon — it feeds the roots of imagination by literally grounding me. But you don’t have to leave the city to make this connection. Sky, bird, insect, rock, breeze — these are available everywhere, and to me these are the most essential vocabulary of poetry.
Who is your favorite naturalist poet? What is your favorite poem about nature?
I could not survive without poetry. I really admire the work of Mark Doty, Linda Hogan, Issa, Randall Jarrell, Mary Oliver, and Pattiann Rogers. But I have to say my favorite poem is Mark Doty’s “A Green Crab’s Shell.”
With the Gulf Coast oil spill in mind, what do you think about the current state of the environment? How can we, as writers, give nature a voice? And how can we also listen to nature better?
The BP oil spill has torn a huge hole in my heart that gets bigger every day. And it is only one tragic consequence of our whole addiction to fossil fuels. It is past wake up time. I believe we all have a responsibility to address climate change by making deep, essential changes in the way we live. Because writers are deep listeners, we have a unique role to help others listen. Through our use of image, sound, and story, we can help others re-imagine both our present path and our collective future.
