AN INTERVIEW WITH Anne Haven McDonnell

How is your writing informed by current social and/or political issues? 

Much of my writing is drawn from my fascination with the more than human world. The more I learn about any being in the natural world, the more awed I am by the intelligence and mysteries of nature. The dominant political systems are devouring the planet. I’m interested in writing into the grief, wonder, complexity, complicity, imaginative mystery in where and how different people and cultures relate to the natural world. 

How does Living with Wolves connect to your personal experiences and/or identity? 

I lived on an island in British Columbia for a year in my twenties when I did an organic farm internship. I fell in love with this wild island and the community there. Since that time, I’ve gone to visit good friends on the island as often as possible. During my last sabbatical from my teaching position at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, NM, my partner and I spent a few months in the late summer and fall on the island. After some encounters with wolves on the island, I became fascinated by the history of their presence and by the community’s divided relationship with them. During our fall visit, I started to research the history of wolves on the island, and I recorded interviews with different people on the island from different ends of the spectrum on the inevitably controversial efforts towards co-existing with wolves. I am and was an outsider to this island community, which both limits my knowledge of the situation and also gives me space to see and imagine the issues from another perspective. 

When did you begin writing the poems for Living with Wolves? And, what was the biggest surprise as you were writing and gathering poems for the chapbook?

I first worked on an essay that was based on this research with wolves. With editorial help from ecologist and writer Cristina Eisenberg, this essay was published in the journal Whitefish Review. The questions and stories from this research stayed with me, and as I started focusing on writing poetry, a few of my poems found inspiration in this experience and research. As I wrote more poems about the wolves, I thought about writing a series that would explore the island’s relationship with wolves from different perspectives. I began these poems about five years ago, but wrote most of the series in the last two years. The biggest surprise for me came in the different perspectives and epiphanies I had writing poems that grew out of this material after I’d already written an essay about it. It’s interesting to me how different forms (poetry and nonfiction) can approach the same material in fresh ways. 

What is the most difficult part about putting a chapbook collection together (or the most challenging aspect at any stage in creating a collection, making it whole, and seeing it through to publication)? 

This is my first book publication. I’ve also finished a full-length poetry collection, and I’m sending it out now to try to find a publisher. In general, I write poem to poem, so staying with this theme and material through a whole collection was challenging for me. I also found it rewarding, and found that forcing myself to circle the same material led me to some new and interesting places. 

As Living with Wolves goes out into the world, into the hands of readers, what do you aspire for this book? What do you hope readers will take away from it? 

I hope that readers will glimpse some of the privilege and wonder of living and co-existing with wolves. I wanted to write about the complexity and conflicts of living with wolves as well. The presence of wolves changed my experience of a place, bodily, emotionally, and spiritually. I felt so grateful to hear and glimpse the wolves on the island and to know we shared trails and forest. Even the people I interviewed who had shot wolves and were opposed to some of the co-existence efforts still wanted the wolves to be there on the island. I want people to know co-existence is possible, and although it’s complex and takes effort and compromise, I believe we are incredibly lucky to live in the presence of wolves. 

Who or what are your literary influences? What poets do you continually go back to? And, why? 

My literary influences change with the seasons. Lately, I’ve been returning to the poetry of Brigit Pegeen Kelly, Jane Mead, Aracelis Girmay, Robert Wrigley, Jill Osier, James Galvin, Terrance Hayes, and others.

How has your writing changed overtime? And/or, how has the COVID-19 pandemic changed or affected your relationship to writing, either in the creation of it or the consumption of it?

I’ve gone silent for much of this pandemic. I’m just starting to find a writing practice again. Even if it wasn’t such a dire crazy time, I often take a break from writing in the summers when I like to be in my animal body outside as much as possible. 

What is the best piece of writerly advice that you’ve been given?

When I mentioned feeling bad about not writing during the pandemic, a friend and former mentor, Erin Coughlin Hollowell, said to this: “Hang in there. Get outside when you can. The poetry will find you.” For me right now, this was the perfect writerly advice. 

What’s next for you? What are you working on now, and what can we anticipate in the future? 

I’m working on getting my full-length poetry collection into the world. I’ve also started working on a series of essays that engage with a specific animals, fungi, and plants. And I’m starting, just starting, to write some new poems again. 

If you were venturing into the wilderness (alone) for a month, what three books would you pack and take with you? 

This is always my dilemma! It’s so hard for me to choose. Today I’d take Song by Brigit Pegeen Kelly, Gathering Moss or Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer, Into Great Silence by Eva Saulitis.