EcoBody is a poetry collective collaboratively investigating our responses to chosen themes. We are poets, dancers, wild swimmers, mothers and grandmothers. We write in landscapes: in a wild garden behind a forge, beside streams and rivers, walking the waterlogged ground of the ancient Pevensey Levels on the Sussex coast. Our first project was Wetland EcoBody, six poems derived from time spent together on the Levels.
‘Accord’ was a way to think differently about ecosystems coming together, human and non-human. Instead of compromise, we thought about finding accord, each approaching the concept through our own frame. For Clare Whistler, this was music and birds. For Kim Lasky, it was the islanders of Kiribati. For Kay Syrad it was her relationship with a dog. Jemma Borg was reminded of her experience as a geneticist working with DNA. Karen Smith looked to the smallest life forms, bacteria and yeast.
The result is a poem/sound-piece that in one of its forms is spoken to the playing of a simple chord by composer Alex MacInnis. The poem is a meld of what it means to seek and find accord as we move through life in touch with others – other organisms, other ways of knowing and being, each and every form of life – minuscule and vital.
Accord
is a cord and a thread
is weave
meet parties
pursuant
is heart
flex and fit in pursuit
swoop breath
rebound
body in accord
is agree
is harmony
is rhythm
is meld and touch
tongue and groove
move
to plane
to smooth taking full account taking into account
chord between us
chord together
sound chime
resound
you shine your light onto each other
choir of your own conducting
what, in the library of beings, speaks loudest of accord?
according to yeast
there is a wordless message
a barely-detectable pitch
note struck of a thousand breaths
laughter-fission
belly-budding
come here, lover, come here
can you hear it yet?
a cordial heart
stops being apart
dog knows
we walk he is close we walk we are close
fur-body soft-trots streaks bounds leaps wait
streaks bounds flops panting pure-wet mouth
tongue speaks in lengths
see a bird three
rattle of ice
turn to water drip tree
In the laboratory, bodies
pressed into jars, leaking a not-faint smell of formaldehyde
are like poems
because they are form— form is the nature of
accord, each being in accord with its place,
body to earth
hawthorn leaning with the wind
currenting together
how do we translate
the algorithms of the heart?
accord is heart to heart
is will to act
is pact
is core
is courage affirming agreeing
is meet
This is an extract. You can listen to the whole sound-poem below.
Dark Mountain: Issue 24 – Eight Fires
Our Autumn 2023 full colour edition is an ensemble exploration of the eight ceremonial fires of the year, celebrated in practices, stories, poetry and artwork.
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