is eun an cridhe
water holding the mountains holding the trees. so much
of love is waiting. so much of love is wishing. I throw myself
into foreign laps in search of yours &
bake my heart into a stone. loneliness
as a small god. loneliness
as a breathing woodland. loneliness
draining the sky
of its meat. look:
seasons
are rearranging
themselves. the feathered fleck
of a currawong
is swaddling the
clouds. lovers
are loosening
their syllables
& wedding
their constellations. look earth straight in the eyes &
you will see light—
Eartha Davis
Eartha is a woman of Ngāpuhi heritage living on Wurundjeri land. She placed second in the 2022 Woorilla Poetry Prize Youth Section, was nominated for The Best of the Net Award in 2023, and was shortlisted for the 2024 Creative Writing New Zealand’s Short Story Prize. Her work is published or forthcoming in the Australian Poetry Anthology, Wildness, Cordite, Rabbit, takahē, Frozen Sea, Minarets, Baby Teeth Journal, South Florida Poetry Journal, Circular Publishing, Sunday Mornings at the River, Anti-Heroin Chic, Revolute, JMWW, LEON Literary Review, and ELJ Editions, among others. She is a poetry editor at three journals and currently working with Red Room Poetry on their POEM FOREST project. She dreams of mountains.
Why this Knocked Taylor out:
I think this poem is just...like I just want to sit in it and take it all in. There's a softness and a sadness here that speaks to me so much. And I think what it is, is the connection between the earth and us and our lovers and how loneliness finds us when we're disconnected from the land and our people. idk maybe I'm getting too woo woo but this is a brilliant poem and it was an honor to read.
On a craft level though, the line breaks here are immaculate. A master class. Ending three lines in a row on loneliness centers the speaker in their isolation, but we don’t stay there any longer. It’s as if the speaker is allowing themselves a moment of desolation before reminding, that even when we are alone, the earth has beautiful things for us to connect with. The seasons are ever shifting, as is the speaker.
Visually the poem begins expansive and narrows, then throws itself out into the expanse one last time before landing in “you will see light—” as a promise to both speaker and reader. There is light for you. There is light.
And of course, there’s a whole world in that ending em-dash for us to explore.
Interview
I think maybe talking about the title would be beneficial for our readers. Can you explain it to me and tell me about its significance to this poem?
The title is Scottish Gaelic for ‘the heart is a bird.” For me, poem titles are an ode to ancestry, to the unseen places, that which is felt and heard and thrums within the warm honey of our bones. They should ask us to listen, to soften. To place a hand to our own chests and witness the fluttering. This specific title speaks of the heart’s dual fretting, flying. How it sings, whistles, plumes itself with love, yearning, flaps across the hinterland of a life. Like a bird, the heart seeks a nest. It asks for holding. It gathers little treasures and befriends the sky, all its tufted cotton. It cannot be tamed. It cannot ever silence its song.
What does your writing process typically look like? How do you approach beginning to write a poem all the way through to feeling like it's "ready" to submit?
My writing process is, and always will be, incomprehensibly wild. I see poetry as a kind of dancing, a soft, open-eared listening to the world and all her loves. Lines fall when they wish to fall. Poems emerge like little berries, ripe and ready for picking. I do not believe that poems can be wrestled into being. I also do not believe that poetry and logic - poetry and strict understanding, poetry and rigidity - should ever hold each other’s hands. I submit poems in a flurry, a gust of wind. I set them free. I do not edit them, prune them, try to cut their hair. I release them in all their wildness.
Why did you choose Team Taylor for this poem?
Honestly, it was Martheaus saying “send all your nature crap to Taylor.” All I write is “nature crap.” I don’t think I’ve ever written a poem without mentioning a river or a tree or a mountain or a bird…or all four! Nature always. The body always. Kindness and forests and bubbling brooks and foamy, radiant oceans.