Matt Trease
is a poet, artist, teacher, and astrologer. He serves on the board of the Cascadia Poetics Lab, co-curates the Margin Shift reading series, and serves as the poetry editor for the CAELi Review. His poetry has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies. He is the author of The Outside (forthcoming Carbonation Press, 2024) and the chapbooks Later Heaven (busylittle1way designs) and rcvrdtxt (rlysrslit). He lives in the Salish Sea region of Cascadia on the homeland of the Duwamish people with his partner Xan, his son Harvey, and their dog, Hoopla. Find out more @ https://bio.site/mjtrease.
thinkingwith: writing strategies for reconnecting to earth
Our current media landscape seems hooked on a doom loop, an apocalyptic dream of human self-annihilation from collapsing nation states and anarchy to climate change to AI terminators, to genocidal warmongering. In order to avoid going down with that ship, we, as humans, are going to need to flip the script, to learn to think differently.
This lab will focus on writing strategies, applicable for poetry or prose, for breaking the spell that objectifies and cuts us off from the earth and from place and all the living beings that we (often) obliviously live in relationship with. We’ll do that by intentionally widening the socially-imposed conventions of “normal” perception via some minor alterations to our daily writing practices.
As a trail guide in this 5-week excursion, we’ll read through the first section of Plant Intelligence and the Imaginal Realm: Beyond the Doors of Perception into the Dreaming of Earth by the late herbalist and self-described “Bardic Naturalist” of the Gaian movement, Stephen Harrod Buhner as well as writing by Goethe, Gertrude Stein, Francis Ponge, Will Alexander, Bernadette Mayer, Italo Calvino and more.
Sundays 3-5:00 PM Pacific Time
February 23 – March 23, 2025
February 23
March 2, 9, 16, & 23
*Note: Canadian registrees: if funds are tight, you can pay the CAD equivalent. Please reach out via the contact form.
Order a copy of Plant Intelligence directly from the publisher, Inner Traditions
Course Materials Week One
(Sunday, February 23, 2025, 3-5 pm PST)
Read: Week One Notes
Note: These are more like suggestions or starting points. Read what you can get to/interests you; there’s too much for one week, but you can always come back.
the Prelude and Chapter 1 of Plant Intelligence (here’s a pdf in case you’re still waiting for your copy)
Poems/Essays by Gertrude Stein – “A Grammarian”, Tender Buttons, and “Composition as Explanation” –
and Lyn Hejinian –an excerpt from My Life
Journals by Henry David Thoreau
and Johan Wolfgang Von Goethe
Watch: The Secret Life of Plants, a mind-bending and beautiful documentary from the late 1970s
Listen: Stevie Wonder’s Journey Through the Secret Life of Plants
Write:
In the prelude and opening chapter of Plant Intelligence, Stephen Harrod Buhner continually points out how the illusion that we are somehow separate from the natural world drives us toward closed mindedness and top-down control. He recommends as an initial baby step to countering this mindset, to let go of preconceptions. As writers, a good way to do this is use a compositional method that involves chance-based procedures, parataxis, or tight constraints on what you can write. Here’s some example exercises that might get you going. Choose one or feel free to follow your own path if you have something in mind, or make alterations as you need to.
Example 1: Whether you write prose or poetry, set aside a short amount of time to write (10, 20, 30 min). Be sure that there are random text-based materials around you that you can use (books, magazines, newspapers, your phone, etc). Also have a little timer and set it for 60 seconds. Start your piece with a quote. Start your timer. Starting writing with the quote as your fi rst line or sentence or phrase. When the timer goes of grab something around you and extend the thought with language from that material. Try to keep what you pull to 9 words tops, and try not to end it with the end of a sentence. Start the timer again and try to extend the idea. Keep repeating the process until your predetermined time is up.
Example 2: As with example 1, have some material around you and a pre-determined time to write. This time, we’ll use grammar to stretch your brain plasticity (kind of like in the Gertrude Stein poems). Find a simple quote to start with. Take a noun in that sentence and follow it or replace it with a noun clause. Use your material if you need it. When you’re done, repeat the process with a noun in the clause you just added (or another noun in the sentence). Keep repeating. If noun clauses don’t seem right to you, then use another part of speech, just be sure to keep the whole piece as one sentence. Keep writing until your pre-determined time is up.
Example 3: Sometimes the speed of language can outpace our expectations. You can use that your advantage. Again set a predetermined amount of time to write. This time, randomly choose a letter ahead of time (note: if you have a Scattegories game, there a a die in there for that; it can be helpful but not necessary) . Set a timer for your pre-determined time. Start the timer and write. The objective is not to let your pen stop. If you hit a block think of a word beginning with your letter and use it. Keep writing until your time is up.
Example 4: Find a book you either know nothing about or you hate (or vehemently disagree with). Either rip out or photocopy a random 2-page spread (it should probably be one with lots of words). Grab a Sharpie or a bottle of white-out, or some paint (oil-based not watercolor). Cover over all but about 20 words to make a poem. If you need to keep eliminating words until you have something you like. Feel free to cover over parts of words to make a new word.
Recording: Audio Only Video Chat Text
Course Materials Week Two
(Sunday, March 2, 2025, 3-5 pm PST)
Note that these are meant as jumping off points, not traditional assignments. I try to provide a lot variety for you to have your own insights and experiences. Follow what pulls at you and what you can get to. Don’t feel the need to have to read everything now. You can always come back to it later.
Read: Week 2 Notes
- Chapters 2 & 3 of Plant Intelligence (here’s a pdf in case you’re still waiting for your copy)
- Essays by Georges Perec – Species of Space and Other Places and An Attempt at Exhausting A Place in Paris
- Prose poems by Francis Ponge
- an online anthology of Francis Ponge with English Translations
- Joshua Corey on Translating Ponge and excerpts (Note: this translation is now out of print)
- Translator’s Note and excerpts from The Nioque of Early Spring and more excerpts
- Flash Fiction and Lectures by Italo Calvino Mr Palomar in the Garden and Six Memos for the Next Millennium
- Prose poems by Harryette Mullen S*PeRM**K*T
- Clark Coolidge The Crystal Text
- Jacques Derrida’s attempt to try to understand his cat, The Animal That Therefore I Am
Watch: John Berger’s 1972 4-part BBC series Ways of Seeing
Listen: Check out this Spotify Playlist Music for Plants
Write:
In discussing how to widen our sensory perception, Stephen Herrod Buhner notes that the most important step is merely being intentional, so that’s what we’ll do. We’ll also take some cues from Claude Monet and Clark Coolidge to treat this as an ongoing practice, not meant to self-improve or perfect a technique, but more like a spiritual practice.
First, find a non-human entity to thinkwith – a house plant, a pet, a haystack, a building, an intersection, or even a crystal. Don’t sweat what it is. Think of it like a first date – it’s likely not going to be perfect, but you may both get something out of it. That said, it should at least be something you can be in real physical space with.
Each day, spend some intentional time with this entity (even if it’s just 5-10 min). Journal through your experience, taking notes. Try to be thorough, and it’s ok to use sentence fragments and lists.
One way to start opening up your sensorium is to shift your attention to a particular sense. One day you might try to exhaust your visual sense of the thing. The next day, switch it up and try to hone in on what you hear, then feeling/touch, smell, taste, and so on. Try to push yourself beyond the basics. keep taking notes until you encounter a surprise. On Sunday, we can talk as a group about what you learned from your non-human collaborator.
Course Materials Week Three
(Sunday, March 9, 2025, 3-5 pm PDT)
Read: information coming soon
Listen: information coming soon
Course Materials Week Four
(Sunday, March 16, 2025, 3-5 pm PDT)
Read: information coming soon
Listen: information coming soon
Course Materials Week Five
(Sunday, March 23, 2025, 3-5 pm PDT)
Read: information coming soon
Listen: information coming soon