Following the release of ALOCASIA’s new poetry anthology, 99 queer writers on plants and nature, editors Sarah Clark and Ashely Adams spoke with Sundress editorial intern Tara Rahman. Here, they discussed the poetics of botanical terminology, the resilience of queer plant and human communities in surviving and thriving in harsh environments, and the important work of protecting and cultivating Indigenous identities, knowledge, and wildlife in the face of oppressive and exclusionary systems. Together, they imagine new possibilities of being with the natural world—of burning away the dry brush and clearing the way for new bonds to grow.
Tara Rahman: Why did you choose the plant name, ALOCASIA, as the title for this anthology?
Sarah Clark and Ashely Adams: The title of the anthology is derived from the magazine’s name ALOCASIA. Now, where did the magazine’s name come from? It’s the name of a plant genus found in the Aroid family (the family many common house plants are part of). They have an interesting growth habit where they spring up from tubers or rhizomes as bunches of stalks with these shield-like leaves.
They have also been endlessly manipulated for visual aesthetic. I’m not sure if there was a deeper meaning at the time than it was a good sounding name, and we were very much into houseplants. Funny enough, Sarah doesn’t even own any alocasias due to their tendency to pick up pests. (Ashely did, and they did indeed end up with mealy bugs every time).
TR: Can you speak to the usage of scientific or botanical names of plants in these poems?
SC and AA: While we can’t speak for the authors, our feeling is that plant names carry immense meaning. There is a poetry, a literacy, in botanical terminology. There’s a delight in learning and applying terms like petiole, umbral, or extrafloral nectaries. Someone could write a whole book on the implications of scientific names (a “universal” name derived from a long dead language) or how common names twist and turn over time.
For example: the false Solomon’s seal is a common perennial found across North America. Just looking at the name, we can infer that there is some sort of “true” Solomon’s seal and that some characteristic of it reminded people of Solomon’s seal. Furthermore, we can guess that this is a name that came after colonization. We can ask all sorts of questions from there. What were the Indigenous names for the plant? What about this humble plant inspired settlers to invoke religious iconography? What makes a thing the “false” version of another? We’ve generated so many things we could explore within poetry with just one plant.
TR: Gardens, succulents (e.g., saguaros), and other houseplants are recurring images throughout the anthology. What is their significance? How do they reflect the lived experiences of queer individuals?
SC and AA: We build so many connections to the plants we cultivate. As writers, we’re drawn to interrogate the connections we make, especially the ones closest to us. Beyond the “write what you know” aspect, there’s tension at the heart of cultivation. Change must happen both in the plant and the caretaker for the relationship to work, just as change must happen to ensure the survival (and hopefully more) of a queer person in often hostile environments. M.P. Rosalia’s poem, “sapling, taken from the northern pacific coast, kept in a jar” is a great illustration of this. The sapling, despite being cared for by the speaker of the poem, cannot survive within the confines of the jar. It is a being meant for sun and immense space.
TR: Many poems in the anthology consider ideas of queer sensuality, such as “Dry Love” and “looking for a soft place to land.” How does the image of nature connect to or embody queer desire?
SC and AA: Plants, from a human perspective, are very strange organisms. They communicate in chemical networks hidden to the naked eye. They create their own energy from water and sunlight. They reproduce through insect intermediaries, the wind, water, even from shards of themselves. They can be male, female, both, or neither. Everything we adore and survive on comes from the sexual peculiarities of plants. The question isn’t so much how does a plant embody queer desire but how it could be anything but?
TR: In “Plancestors,” Rebecca Kinkade-Black writes, “‘We are all connected’ / is not just some trite phrase / It is remembrance / that we are all unified by the molecules that make us.” Tell me about the importance of building community with our queer planty relatives, and the importance of recognizing the diverse “systems of connection” that make up our existence.
SC and AA: We want to give an answer beyond the practical reasons (like “need food”). Society pressures queer people to act a certain way, to be normal, be natural. However, when you study plants, you find that what thrives in nature goes beyond anything that humans can imagine. Anyone who really opens themselves to learning the realities of biology opens themselves to the possibility of being. As Kinkada-Black illustrated, our furthest relatives are our relatives and we can draw on their ways of survival to benefit our own.
TR: Ashely: Tell me more about your choice of language, syntax, and form in “Prescribed Burn,” such as the use of dialogue and definitions.
AA: I’m a sucker for a braided essay. I love putting disparate elements together and letting a reader build connections. I like to think it creates personal narratives in less expected ways. I also confess I kind of hate writing in the “I” voice in my nonfiction. This is definitely one of my more “personal” personal narratives.
I also love using the language from the natural sciences. My first degree was in fisheries and wildlife. I am always excited when I can bring together that life into my writing. There’s always that tension when you sit the scientific next to more lyrical writing. I feel that tension gives you a better appreciation for each type of writing. I certainly didn’t come to appreciate everything I learned in my undergrad until I switched to creative writing pursuing my advanced degrees.
Finally, I think all these tensions can allow us to look at discourses we’re saturated with (in this case, gender-based violence and discrimination) with a sense of surprise and curiosity. It pushes a reader to think of the quiet ways oppression shapes the way we look and approach the world. A hike in the Florida scrub is laden with risk and privilege and burden.
TR: In “Mother of Thousands,” Nikki Wallschlaeger writes, “…I ask you to take the batteries out of the clanging wall clock before I go to sleep to prevent the supremacist art of domestication from permeating my dreams.” How does capitalist exploitation and domination over the natural world intersect with systemic inequality and the marginalization of certain communities?
SC and AA: This is the flip side of your question on connections. To maintain hierarchies, there has to be a breaking of bonds–not just between people, but the land they occupy as well.
When you break these bonds, you get this cascading system of exclusion and oppression. I think Marcy Rae Henry demonstrates this well in the poem “Los saguaros are being destroyed”. Boundaries are drawn on fluid landscapes for nation-states to claim. The claim leads to oppression of the beings who dare to occupy the space in contradiction of the nation-state’s will, no matter how long they were there before the powers that be: “…saguros can live two centuries / As long as this country has been / Longer than this f r o n t e r a”.
The poet correctly states that the removal of the saguaro is done as a means to remove people. And these ideas of worth and humanity are fluid, ever shifting depending on what those at the top of the hierarchy deem as valuable. One area of wilderness is a wasted economic opportunity while another is a paradise worthy of utmost preservation. The removal of saguaro is a serious crime unless it’s done in service of a border wall.
TR: Many of these poems juxtapose imagery of the natural world with capitalist, corporate landscapes, such as in “i want clean water dammit,” “the office // the after,” and “An Anti-Pastoral.” How can we reconcile this “simultaneously / medicinal & poisonous” (from “An-Anti Pastoral”) relationship between humanity and the environment that surrounds us? How can we reimagine our relationship with the natural world?
SC and AA: Despite the aims of capitalism and bigotry, humans inherently crave connection. It’s arguably the reason the species has been so successful. It’s our instinct to bond with other beings, even non-human ones. It’s one of the deeply charming things about humans. We’ll look at a plant and declare it our friend and confidant, 1.5 billion years of evolutionary separation be damned. Obviously, human development imperils many organisms, but we hope the writers of this anthology show ways we might build partnership with the natural world, even as we become more urbanized. A spider fern in an apartment window can be a challenge to the corporate world–an existence based not on monetary value, but its beauty and tenacity and plain existence.
TR: In “Prescribed Burn,” the speaker states, “Still, I bend down…and think a better future is possible. One where we listen to those who have suffered. One where we let the fires burn.” How can we imagine a future that is more sustainable for marginalized communities, both human and plant? What kinds of burnings would need to take place?
SC and AA: When you suppress fires in fire-dependent ecosystems, dead vegetation builds up into dangerous fuel loads. These fuel loads are one of the reasons we are now experiencing some of the most devastating wildfires in modern history. Much like our land, our communities are being buried in these fuel loads, ready to ignite into radicalization and stochastic violence. To survive, we must find ways to remove this dead weight, these dry ideas and systems, and allow something new and healthy to grow in its place.
TR: Which poem in this anthology resonate most with you and why?
AA: One of the pieces I was drawn to was arushi (aera) rege’s poem “nuclear winter, burning planet”. I’m a sucker for an apocalyptic vibe and the challenge that comes in imagining and even loving a life in ruin.
SC: They’re all my babies (or should I say propagations)! It’s so hard to choose just one, but…
The use of National Park Service information cards as a format to explore trans identity and desire and anxieties. The metaphor of a trans person’s life as a nurse log, a tree that sustains the life of other young trees and plants, is really affecting.
The expectations, realities, and hope in Talicha J.’s “another year sprouts” connect with me profoundly. I’ve gotten so many ming aralias, and tell myself this time it’ll be different, this time I’ll be different.
Sreeja Naskar’s three poems “i unsaint myself in front of the mirror,” “after they left, the garden wouldn’t bloom / but the weeds did,” and “she left in autumn and everything I’ve planted since has grown teeth” that are an emotional journey linking the botanical world with profoundly queer love and equally profound loss are perennial favorites.
With the world being what it is, who doesn’t want to just smoke some oui’d with the ancestors surrounded and held by green space? June Beck’s “A text message to a New York Navajo” totally gets it.
Anangookwe Wolf’s “i want clean water god dammit” begins with a remembrance interrupted by the insistence of colonialism, industrialism, capitalist expansion and extraction.
It weaves through the centuries of loss of indigenous identity and wildlife, our struggles and strides to protect and cultivate it, and then culminates in the ferocious, but reasonable demand “i don’t want concrete I want clean water.”
I feel this one in my marrow.
ALOCASIA: 99 queer writers on plants and nature is available to order now!
Sarah Clark is a disabled two-spirit Nanticoke editor, writer, and freelance editor and cultural consultant. They are Editor-in-Chief and Poetry Editor at ANMLY, EIC at beestung, and Co-editor of the Bettering American Poetry series, and a Board member at Sundress Publications. They were co-editor of two folios at Apogee Journal, #NoDAPL #Still Here folio, and their series WE OUTLAST EMPIRE and Place[meant]. You can find them at: https://linktr.ee/sarah_clark.
Ashely Adams is a Michigan-based writer and educator whose work explores both present and ancient ecologies. Her writing has appeared in Flyway, The Fourth River, and other places.
Tara Rahman is a Sundress editorial intern with a BA in English Language and Literature from Smith College and an MSc in Global Development from SOAS, University of London. With a strong interest in culture, identity, and global history, her personal writing focuses on intersectionality and the untold stories of marginalized communities.
