Part of the Cascadia 2050 mission is: to inspire artists and poets of the next generation to consider bioregionalism and intuitive poetic approach as a way to foster a more just and sustainable Cascadia by 2050. To this end, one of our goals is to interview people who help us spread awareness by having practices in their lives that reflect these values. This interview is with Joel O’Connor, about Locust, his recent chapbook. “Locust is a suite of nine poems that draws on scientific study of grasshoppers transforming into locusts, and their potential to revert, alongside the phenomenon of fascism reoccurring in cycles, in human societies.” Thus reads the first paragraph of the introduction. Joel goes on to say that “As with science, his poetry doesn’t purport to know all the answers and, in fact, is often an exercise in exploring why? to stimulate curiosity and debate in the reader…”
I feel very grateful to have had the opportunity to interview Joel. His insight and delivery in both conversation and poetry are as profound as they are sensitive. Please enjoy the interview!
Find Locust here, with a link to the video in the pdf.
Great interview, Zach and Joel! I listened to the entire 50:39 and was entertained, while enriched. I also viewed the video version of the Locust Suite and that was enjoyable as well. Congratulations, Joel!
As an acridologist (a person who studies the Acrididae, which are the grasshoppers and locusts), I’d like to thank you for an evocative, free-ranging discussion rooted in locust biology and human politics.
The parallels are most intriguing, as locusts exploit an abundant, ephemeral energy source during rainy years that produce plenty of plants—and humans exploited an abundant, ephemeral energy source during the industrial revolution. In a sense, how could either species have foregone the incredible opportunity?
Both species are drawn into a kind of positive feedback system such that MORE becomes the driving motive.
While locusts are cannibalistic (this behavior may well play a role moving a band of nymphs forward to avoid the laggards becoming a snack), we cannibalize the slow, weak, and vulnerable—at least metaphorically.
Speaking of metaphors, there would appear to be something of a disanalogy between a locust swarm and our “man swarm” of 8.3 billion people (there’s a book by that title by Dave Foreman).
That is, of course, that locusts have no leader in their anarchistic state, while a clear leader emerges in a fascist or authoritarian state (terms used by political scientists to describe Donald Trump’s United States of America). However, we might think of natural selection as being the “leader” of locust behavior—and natural selection can be a brutal, amoral force perhaps not unlike America’s narcissistic president (so maybe the disanalogy becomes an analogy?).
And finally, there’s an interesting parallel to thoughtful and greedy humans in Aesop’s fable of “The Ant and The Grasshopper” in which the ant looks to the future and saves food for the hard times ahead, and the grasshopper attends only to present pleasures of summer. So, will the ant’s perspective emerge in the coming years, or are we doomed to a deadly winter—or in our case, a searing summer. Okay, one last note: the word locust is said to derive from the Latin phrase locus ustus, which translates to “burnt place.”
How darkly ironic that humans (2-legged locusts) are converting ecosystems to burnt place via wildfire and global warming!