in Chatsworth, Grey Highlands, Southgate, West Grey
October 13, 2022
BY JOHN BUTLER FOR SOUTHGREY.CA — It started with a weeping willow.
On September 23, local eco-poet Elizabeth Glenn-Copeland performed excerpts from her latest book (and first book of poetry), Daring to Hope at the Cliff’s Edge: Pangea’s Dream Remembered: A Poetic Odyssey, before a rapt audience at the fourth and final event in this year’s Community Connections series held in the Kimberley Community Hall. This series, co-sponsored by the Kimberley Community Association, the Grey Highlands Community Action Group, the Grey Highlands Public Library, the Escarpment Biosphere Conservancy and the Beaver Valley Bruce Trail Club, explored the connections within the natural world in Grey Highlands.
Elizabeth developed her interest in the natural world at an early age. Behind her childhood home in Ingersoll lay a field with a large lightning-riven weeping willow in it. Elizabeth and her lifelong friend Marion spent hours nestled in the tree’s arms. As Elizabeth put it in her book, the tree “mothered me as a child”. This experience and other childhood experiences in the natural world were augmented and focused in her teen years by absorbing the lessons and warnings found in Rachel Carson’s groundbreaking book Silent Spring. The book made her aware of the cultural patterns that underpin our desecration of the world around us. Later, her work as an arts educator with children taught her how deep the anxiety of children about the ruination of land, air and sea can be, but it also taught her a lesson of hope as she witnessed children come to believe they could help put a stop to the ruination.
Elizabeth’s book grew out of her experience as a writer-in-residence at Nova Scotia’s Joggins Fossil Institute, the guardian of the Joggins Fossil Cliffs on the Bay of Fundy. Her exposure to the cliffs inspired her to use them as the point of departure and homeland for her far-ranging spiritual and artistic journey in this book-length poem. As she writes of the cliffs and their kin early in the book,
“you are called
an abiotic (non-living)
component of the ecosystem
(along with sunlight and clouds) but if that is so
why, when I am in your presence, am I so moved?...
but what if I could still my chattering mind
long enough to hear your voice?”
Elizabeth’s poetic journey in her book (she describes it as a “poetic odyssey”) takes us to the fascinating places and creatures that greened her sensibility from the vantage point of Joggins Cliffs. It takes us on an exploration of the power of birds and insects (dragonflies galore!) to guide and accompany us. It takes as to and through the works of famed fellow poets Lawrence Ferlinghetti, D. H. Lawrence and Emily Dickinson — and the works of poets Heather Payne, Carolyn Lunn and Cynthia McCarthy who crafted their poetry as students with Elizabeth’s guidance. The journey returns again and again to the comradeship of trees. It takes us to the wounds inflicted on the world’s water and asks for forgiveness. It takes us to her beloved family members and friends and it draws on her own Celtic heritage and wisdom for guidance and hope. It refreshes itself at way-stations of earth-based teaching, including respectful references to Mi’kmaq culture. Elizabeth takes us as companions on her journey through the four seasons, culminating in a fifth season of sorts — the season of hope — if we embrace the natural world of which we are a loved and loving part. Her journey, for us to witness and join, crosses time zones and geological eras with equal ease.
Elizabeth’s performance for her Kimberley audience deftly wove together an explanation of the roots of her journey, performances of passages from Daring to Hope at the Cliff’s Edge, the calming resonance from a gong-like bowl she struck gently after each part of her performance, helping the audience to use silence as a learning tool, audience participation, and a percussion-and-voice performance by her husband Beverly.
The arts with a purpose define Elizabeth’s life. She is a writer (prose, poetry and plays), theatre artist and actor, storyteller and arts educator with training and performance experience in dance as well. To use her words, her artistic practice is “rooted in a commitment to environmental and social justice”
She says she born with a passion for the arts — originally drawing, writing and dancing, influenced by her musician mother. She recalls fondly and vividly witnessing a performance of The Nutcracker Suite as a child, and dressing afterward as a wounded swan to emulate what she had seen. At six she enrolled in dance classes. In high school she took theatre arts classes and, enthralled by a performance of Man of La Mancha staged by Theatre London, she knew acting would be part of her artistic future. In her thirties she developed an interest in oral storytelling. While she has always written and has always been a reader of poetry, a series of poetry classes she took at Sackville Nova Scotia’s Mount Allison University led her to write for public consumption starting in 2010.
Elizabeth believes the arts have the potential to create alternate consciousness, to craft visions that, influenced by the sciences and merged with politics, can disturb us in the creative sense of that world: artists can be prophets. Yet she maintains that we have become distanced from artistic practices. Few of us actually perform or write or play an instrument these days: we have turned the arts over to professionals who too often proclaim “look at me”, unlike the “look at us” mindset that pervaded the community-rooted artistic expressions of our past. She maintains that arts are not a luxury — they are central to our existence. Elizabeth says that her job is to encourage others to practice and cherish the arts in pursuit of the shared public good — practices that will help us overcome what she calls our “crisis of imagination”.
When asked what people past or present have influenced her, Elizabeth’s choices included towering figures of action as well as figures of artistic creation. She admires Martin Luther King Jr. for his ability to rally people to a common moral cause. She admires Joan of Arc because this warrior-visionary had the tenacity to heed the voices in her own mind and soul. Elizabeth admires New England poet Emily Dickinson because she rebelled against the prevailing way of writing poetry in the mid nineteenth century and replaced it with forms rooted in clarity and simplicity. She admires author and teacher Robin Wall Kimmerer, a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation and Director of the Center for Native Peoples and the Environment, at the State University of New York’s College of Environmental Science and Forestry: Kimmerer provides groundbreaking programs that allow for greater access for Indigenous students to study environmental science, and for science to benefit from the wisdom of Indigenous philosophy. And Elizabeth admires Diana Beresford-Kroeger an Irish-born botanist, medical biochemist and author — now living in Canada — who brings an understanding and appreciation of the scientific complexities of nature to the general public.
Elizabeth and her husband Beverly — both professional arts practitioners — are newcomers to Grey Highlands. After the dislocations of several years of the COVID pandemic, the couple decided to re-set their lives by returning to Ontario from Nova Scotia, and they found a delightful tree-and-rock-nestled home on the outskirts of Eugenia – an ideal home base for their pursuits, according to Elizabeth.
Based on the reaction of audience members at Elizabeth’s Kimberley Hall performance, her artistic expressions are welcome – a sentiment echoed by Jennifer Murley, Chief Librarian of the Grey Highlands Public Library, who helped organize the Kimberley event as part of Kimberley’s Community Connections series, and also as part of the Library’s Ontario Culture Days celebrations. Said Murley, "Listening to Elizabeth discuss her book was just as special as the first time I read it. She speaks just as she writes - with humour and eloquence. This special event made us sit in the discomfort of the world where we live, and reflect on our own thoughts and intentions, leaving the audience feeling a little less hopeless and more connected to our planet. Elizabeth's event was exactly what Ontario Culture Days and libraries are all about – providing space that opens the world of theatre, performance, and activism to everyone in the community." And Murley looks forward to future events that showcase Grey Highlands’ human wealth: "I'm constantly amazed by this community – we don't have to go far to bring exciting educational experiences to residents. The local talent is unprecedented. The Library is looking forward to future partnerships, to bring unique cultural experiences to Grey Highlands."
Elizabeth Glenn-Copeland’s book Daring to Hope at the Cliff’s Edge: Pangea’s Dream Remembered: A Poetic Odyssey, can be borrowed from the Grey Highlands Public Library. It can also be purchased from the publisher, Chapel Street Editions. If you’re interested in her other books (JAZZ - Nature’s Improvisation and Bearing Witness), or if you’d like to find out how to engage her for a performance, please contact Elizabeth Glenn-Copeland at elizabeth@songcycles.com.
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