a disobedient gathering: poems for plants who can’t stay put by Katherine Barrett

a disobedient gathering: poems for plants who can’t stay put by Katherine Barrett, illustrated by Ali Brew (Spot of Poetry, 2024) is a thin beauty of a 32-page chapbook.

Let me first be head-turned by the superficial. It’s an object made with love including the paper, art, and hand-sewn binding with a rainbow thread. It’s rare that one would want to cannibalize a chapbook, but the drawings are so pretty. I kind of want to frame a few. (Tell me that’s wrong.)

Those who have it in hand— check under the french flaps for bonus material — an extra poem.

It spurred a new poem which is always a good sign from reading. The poems have a casual swagger and impish play with their subjects. Sometimes the narrator is the weed. Although weed is a local term. Like heroes, the naming depends on where you stand.

[a disobedient gathering] spurred a new poem which is always a good sign from reading. The poems have a casual swagger and impish play with their subjects.

The focus of Barrett is on introduced/naturalized/invader species. Joe Pye is indigenous to North America. There’s a dissolving of plants and history. The species themselves came with immigrants, such as plantain. As in the round-leaved plant in the lawn, not the banana family. The end of the opening poem is about it, (p. 7)

That lends sustenance in spring, stored fortunes throughout fall. That boasts tough fiber— to mend and heal and soothe. That spurns bitterness, makes space beyond kin. Contains a continent of wisdom yet is ready, willing, to acclimatize.

And I wonder. Was she as worthy an arrival?

Am I?

It seems a good companion reading for Claudia Radmore’s Sweet Vinegars: poems of wildflowers (Shoreline, 2024) which at 101 pages is also dedicated to the same theme. Radmore chooses the common name as title with Latin botanical names as subtitle and Barrett sometimes Latin name, sometimes common with notes in the back on species, origin and habitat.

Both poets even have poems for broadleaf plantain, coltsfoot, Queen Anne’s Lace, Creeping Charlie and Pye Weeds, although each for related species. What is Radmore’s take on plantain, (p. 82)

the New Zealand baker adds its ground seeds 
to bread dough

a Roman chef chops its smallest leaves 
with basil for pizza

in Massachusetts Emily Dickinson 
adds the broadleaf

plantain to her herbarium, then 
labels it precisely

Both poets put themselves into the plants, take the plants as a context and consequence of colonialism, and a filter through which to perceive. Barrett kicks back at history in Queen Anne’s Lace, “Can we forgo metaphors of whiteness,/white as measure? Problematic/as central feature.” and tether’s the wild carrots’s umbel to women judged by exteriors.

The poems remind that there is no weak subject only weak implementation. A compelling poignant idea as the focus in poetry, war, parental loss, or love, isn’t the key thing, nor is a more neutral idea, weather, plants, the moon, whatever— make for dull poems. What matters is how it is carried out. The subject isn’t a typical promising hook, but the implementation was charming in some poems and moving in others. Weeds perhaps are even having a zeitgeist moment with two titles on it within a few months by coincidence.

A subject is a means to ends; to reflect, re-weigh, think collectively. We are the newcomers, as humans. Joe Pye Wed predated us (p. 29) “before meter and iamb split our words in two” and “before prejudice”. The implicit message being that plants enact the eternal truths by living. We only have to listen and live.

Katherine Barrett is a writer and editor living in southwest Nova Scotia / Mi’kma’ki. She is inspired and distracted by her disobedient garden. Website: katherinejbarrett.com

Publisher: Spot of Poetry (October 2024)
Chapbook: 5.6 x 8.5 inches | 32 pp
ISBN 9781738376681

Pearl Pirie

Website

Pearl Pirie's latest is we astronauts (Pinhole Press, 2025). Pirie’s 4th poetry collection is footlights (Radiant Press, 2020). rain’s small gestures(Apt 9 Press, 2021) won the 2022 Nelson Ball Prize. www.pearlpirie.com and patreon.com/pearlpiriepoet