“What possibilities might they open and what tender spots might they touch?”; “If you were soil, would you want to be inside? Are houses sexy?”; and “If your plants suddenly became people, what kind of people would they be?” by Nicelle Davis appeared in Issue 44 and can be found here.
We’d love to hear more about this set of poetry.
During quarantine my original and imaginative approach to content and form emerging from personal experiences changed dramatically. Public art was no longer possible, leading me to develop new collaborations focusing on inter-media. Live interaction was not safe, so I strangely and intuitively turned to a relationship with indoor plants, discovering a wide range of personalities and challenges. This obsession grew into a collection of over 300 houseplants within my 900-square-foot home.
I shared this new creative investigation online and poets and film enthusiasts reached out to me, intrigued by my interest. I responded to their queries with poetry in combination with content creation. Collaborating with Anthony Sannazzaro, we launched the YouTube channel “Plants Painting Poetry,” which delves into the intersections of art and plant culture. This project reflects a unique blend of film and poetry, personal narrative and creative expression, emphasizing the search for meaning during times of crisis.
What was the most difficult part of this particular set?
I went plant crazy. I must have spent a year’s worth of my son’s college fund on semi-rare plants. The most difficult part of creating this piece was navigating the emotional complexity of drawing parallels between the plant market and the sex trade. Before quarantine, I had been studying the sex trade to understand how value and price are determined, largely through supply and demand. During quarantine, I turned to plants as a seemingly safer subject, only to discover unsettling similarities. The fact that people were paying up to $10,000 for a small part of a plant—a node—made these parallels even more striking. This process was both compelling and emotionally challenging as I tried to reconcile the beauty of nurturing life with the disturbing realities of commodification. I’m currently working on a book-length collection of poems that further explores the messiness of the human experience in comparison to the lives of plants.
Recommend a book for us which was published within the last decade.
La Sirena by Maurya Simon is a novel in verse. Like all of her work, the poems delight.
If you could have a drink with any living author, who would it be? Why?
Juan Felipe Herrera because he makes magic.
What are you working on now? What’s next?
I’m currently working on a book-length collection of poems that delves into the complexities of the human experience in contrast to the lives of plants.
I’m also excited to share that my manuscript Penguin Noir recently won the Changing Light Prize at Livingston Press. Penguin Noir is a novel-in-verse that challenges traditional storytelling by questioning the inevitability of defined endings. The story follows a penguin who dreams of escaping her artificial world, encouraging readers to imagine a new and better life, while leaving them without any sense of certainty or hope.
Our thanks to Nicelle for taking the time to answer a few questions and share these poems. Read “What possibilities might they open and what tender spots might they touch?”; “If you were soil, would you want to be inside? Are houses sexy?”; and “If your plants suddenly became people, what kind of people would they be?” here.
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Nicelle Davis is a California poet, collaborator, and performance artist. Her poetry collections include The Walled Wife (Red Hen Press, 2016), In the Circus of You (Rose Metal Press, 2015), Becoming Judas (Red Hen Press, 2013), and Circe (Lowbrow Press, 2011). The Language of Fractions was recently released from Moon Tide Press. Her poetry film collaborations with Cheryl Gross have been shown across the world. She has taught poetry at Youth for Positive Change, an organization that promotes success for youth in secondary schools, MHA, Volunteers of America in their Homeless Youth Center, and with Red Hen’s WITS program. She is the creator of The Poetry Circus and collaborator on the Nevermore Poetry Festival. She currently teaches Middle School.