The Kete Questionnaire — Megan Kitching
Author:
Megan Kitching
Publisher:
Otago University Press
ISBN:
9781990048562
Date Published:
22 June 2023
Pages:
72
Format:
Paperback
RRP:
$25.00
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Megan Kitching was born in Tāmaki Makarau Auckland and now lives in Ōtepoti Dunedin. While her poetry has appeared in various journals and collections, At the Point of Seeing is her debut collection. Long fascinated by the natural world, she holds a PhD in English Literature from Queen Mary University, London, looking at the influence of the natural sciences on 18th century poetry. This, in turn, has influenced her own writing. In 2021, she was the inaugural Caselberg Trust Elizabeth Brooke-Carr Emerging Writer Resident.
Can you explain how your fascination with the natural world started?
For as long as I can remember, I’ve loved nature and have wanted to get to know the non-human world more closely. As a child, I climbed trees and explored rock pools; I kept goldfish, tadpoles, skinks and mice, had a small garden and grew houseplants, and pored over animal encyclopaedias from the library. So I suppose that love has always been with me and runs in the family. My father was a keen birdwatcher, especially waders and seabirds, and my mother loved gardening and tramping. My brother is a wonderful photographer of land- and seascapes. Growing up in Aotearoa, it’s hard not to love and appreciate the natural environment.
The relationship between the arts and the sciences still fascinates me. Measuring nature is reductive in many ways but without measurement we wouldn’t know about the beautiful branching rules of trees.
What was it that led you to study the influence of the natural sciences on 18th century poetry? Was there, perhaps, a toss-up between being a writer or a botanist?
My PhD really started with botanical poetry: I came across these long, exuberant poems written in the late 18th century by Erasmus Darwin, grandfather of Charles. Darwin was an extraordinary polymath exploring ideas like plant consciousness, the birth of stars and early evolutionary theory – in poetry. That led me to study how other poets in Britain at the time were writing about the huge shifts in understanding the natural world they were experiencing.
During my doctorate I probably got more interested than a literature student should in the cultural history of the sciences, and how science and technology have become our dominant modes of knowledge, for better and for worse. I’m still interested in science but very much as a layperson trained in the arts. I’ve learned about exciting discoveries like those in plant communication and forest ecology mostly through popular books and essays. The explosion in nature and science writing has meant plenty of creative non-fiction to devour.
What did you discover – and how have your discoveries and, indeed, the PhD itself influenced your writing and poetry?
One question I’m still dwelling on is how we balance data and wonder, how we reconcile our factual, knowledge-seeking selves with our more creative sides. The authors I was reading for my PhD were into measuring, labelling and mapping nature—contributing to the destructive colonial and commercial expansion of the period. But they were also plainly bowled over by looking at the stars through a telescope or discovering a new flower. They were trying to impose order on chaos and at the same time they were full of awe.
The relationship between the arts and the sciences still fascinates me. Measuring nature is reductive in many ways but without measurement we wouldn’t know about the beautiful branching rules of trees. I’m still trying to strike that balance in my own poetry and to find a language that’s particular and grounded without being too objective or detached. Luckily, we have a more diverse ecological vocabulary today that’s learning from many traditions. And it’s much better to live with a productive question than with an answer, which is one belief poetry holds that I think many scientists would share.
Megan Kitching: “Writing and reading open us to other minds and ways of seeing. That can help immensely in deepening our awareness.”
Promotional information for this, your debut collection, notes that, ‘These compelling poems urge the reader to slow down and give space to the living, moving, breathing environment that surrounds them.’ Is that your hope for the collection – that it urges us to take more notice of the natural world around us?
Yes, I certainly hope so. Poems often carry that small injunction to be attentive, to notice and appreciate things we might otherwise miss. This doesn’t need to be a grand epiphany in the wilderness. We are already part of nature and so the daily business of living can remind us of those connections and of other lives like the weeds under our feet. I very much hope these poems can be such reminders for readers.
That’s not to deny the urgency of the environmental crisis we’re facing. There’s a danger that the older forms of solace are being lost. Helen Macdonald writes that, ‘Increasingly, knowing your surroundings, recognising the species of animals and plants around you, means opening yourself to constant grief.’ I feel that vividly. But when I take notice of nature I also see the incredible persistence and tenacity of life going on despite everything. That’s a source of optimism and of ongoing delight.
In what ways can writing help us to take more notice of the natural world – and I am referring to, perhaps, doing our own as well as reading the writing of others?
Writing and reading open us to other minds and ways of seeing. That can help immensely in deepening our awareness. When I read Barry Lopez, for instance, I’m experiencing a living landscape through his curiosity and the immediacy of his descriptions but also the decades of reading, conversations and fieldwork that make up his understanding of the place he’s in.
I don’t claim that my own writing does this! But I do try to take the time to let whatever I’m writing about reveal something of its own nature. Making poems, for me, involves lots of quietly waiting. Even if I have a subject or question in mind, I might carry that around with me for a while, jotting down notes and maybe doing research before any draft emerges.
Being in the garden or by the sea is similar: if you’re able to spend a bit of time observing and being patient, you’ll almost always discover or notice something new. Poems can occur in the same way. Getting past your first impressions to find the particulars, the more distinctive ways of saying things, is part of that. Those details, in turn, will hopefully help bring the reader closer to the poem and its subject.
The poem Growing Advice starts with the quote, ‘At all costs avoid the twisted or winding pathway so often seen in the small garden situated on the corner where two streets meet,’ from the Complete New Zealand Gardener. What was it about that advice that fired you up and why did you include the quote itself?
Writers are so often magpies: we seize bright or intriguing phrases and store them away for later. That line in a 1960s gardening guide just sprang out at me, maybe because of the faintly spooky solemnity of “at all costs.” It was almost a little Hansel and Gretel narrative in its own right. It also reminded me of my own garden. It sat in the notebook for a while until I decided to use the quote itself as a path into a poem. The ends of the lines of Growing Advice make up the epigraph. That’s why I included it in its original form.
You also write about a range of environments, do you have a favourite and where in the world do you feel most creative and what is the place of nature in your life now?
Ōtepoti Dunedin and its wider surrounds are without doubt where I feel most creative at the moment. I grew up by the sea and still love the coastline. Lately, I’ve been drawn to estuaries and inlets – edge environments, where there’s often a lot going on in a quietly dynamic way. Spending time with non-human nature is becoming more and more central to my life and my writing. Even if I’m not writing about birds or forests directly, there’s a spaciousness and alertness that comes from the natural world that inspires me.
You were born in Tāmaki Makaurau and spent some time in the UK, what brought you to Dunedin?
Moving to Dunedin was a conscious choice and a rare case of things coming together. I knew I wanted to return to New Zealand and I had a literal wish-list of what my ideal city would have. Dunedin ticked all the boxes. I remember sitting at my office desk in Dublin using Google Earth to fly home and thinking that the unfurling koru of the Otago Harbour was just so beautiful. I’m very lucky to live here now.
