Plant Story Poetry

This FEELed Note was written by FEELed Lab administrator Julia Jung.

We try to start and end FEELed Lab meetings with a little creative or grounding activity to arrive and leave the shared moment of our meeting together.

For our first FEELed Lab Core meeting of the year, we tried a new intro activity that I came up with called “Plant Story Poetry”. It goes like this:

  1. Everyone has ~2 minutes to share a memory/ a story about an encounter with a plant they had recently that was meaningful to them.
  2. After a person has shared their story, each listener shares a brief reaction in the chat about what came up for them while listening to the story.
  3. After everyone has shared their stories and reactions, you go back up the chat and read each Plant Story Poem out loud.
  4. You revel at the amazing unexpected poetry you just created together and what you may have learned about plants, places and the people you are about to have a meeting with ❤

Here are our Plant Story Poems from today:

1. Poem inspired by a Plant Story shared by me (JJ) about going snorkeling at Paul’s tomb and the underwater macrophytes and school of tiny fish I spent time with yesterday:

Tranquille
refusal
Reaching swarms
“I’m gay, you’re gay, let’s go scuba diving”

The final line of this poem comes from the iconic queer influencer Benji Zecher, whose work was shared with us by Tom, aka our resident meme-expert.

2. Poem inspired by a Plant Story shared by Jamie about learning about native Shuswap plants, including Red Osier Dogwood, from a Secwépemc perspective

Wet whispering
Evaporation
Drought
Buoyant Orientation

3. Poem inspired by a Plant Story shared by Tom about the beauty of Okanagan alpine wildflower meadows:

Standing tall on mountains
Maybe nameless,
Lupine
Surrounded by bright beauties

4. Poem inspired by a Plant Story shared by Nela about the beauty and tragedy of Portuguese man-o-wars in the Basque Country (not a plant, but we’re fluid with definitions here, hehe):

A colony of magic
Strands stranded, leaving
Below the surface
fragile

5. Poem inspired by a Plant Story shared by Astrida about how to navigate the non-native cedar garden dilemma, especially in times of fire and drought… when the thought of ‘getting rid of’ plants (that among other things, provide shade for cats!) is also heartbreaking:

Unwelcome friends
Unwilling interlopers
two minds
collateral

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