Artist Profile: Meg Muthupandiyan
(Muthupandiyan engaged in field study at The University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee at Waukesha Field Station)
Meg Muthupandiyan is a multi-media poet and essayist who largely writes and creates in the field of nature conservancies and public lands. Her first collection of illustrated poetry, titled Forty Days in the Wilderness, Wandering was published in September 2021, and two of her chapbooks were shortlisted for the Wolfson Press Poetry Prize.
1) What was your impetus for starting the Poetry in the Parks series?
One September day, I was walking in my local park and saw a small sheathe of amber and russet-colored bark curling in the grass a few yards from me. I picked it up, and, noticing that it was translucent, held it up to block the sun—proceeding to watch it flicker like a flame. Infused with the last of summer, it became the rarest of mother of pearl slivers; a silk banner of honey-colored treasure; a freshly oiled copper kettle; embossed with light.
Now, contrary to popular belief, poets do not generally walk around waxing poetic. But as the scrap of lacebark pine bark danced in the late summer air, a single line popped into my mind: “Tempered wood. Wrought light.”
Where had that come from? I wondered. Had it been from the poems I had been reading a couple of days before? Somehow someone else’s words had given full form to this experience. And it sure sounded like a poet. I needed to find out who had done me this service. I stood there and filmed that tempered wood wrought with light for thirty seconds to remember how beautiful it was, then went home and revisited the poems I had been reading earlier that week. Sure enough I found the lines—in a poem of Denise Levertov’s titled “Athanor.” Setting passages of Levertov’s poem as text over the footage of the bark moving in the light, in addition to the rhythm of Mozart’s Sonata Facile, I produced a short film titled “Woodlight,”
Poetry in the Parks didn’t start the moment I realized I was holding my breath at how beautiful it was…and found myself reciting poetry. It started when I realized an encounter with nature can augment the appreciation of a poem. And a poem can augment the appreciation of an encounter in nature.
In the four years since that day, Poetry in the Parks has become a public humanities project that straddles the divide between the digital and tactile worlds. Today we work with a wide swathe of people to create collaborative poetry films in public lands around the U.S. as well as other countries. One of our films, “I Sing the Body Electric” (which was filmed in collaboration with a group of strangers who attended the 2020 March on Washington), has been featured at several film festivals. It was an award winner at the Make Art Not Fear Film Festival of Porto Portugal in 2022.
These short films feature the voices of readers who come from all walks of life—poets, artists, park people and people who haven’t had to recite a poem out loud since they were in junior forensics. We work with amateur photographers and videographers who have captured the day in their land community plus set their visual impressions to verse. And we support schools, educational organizations and environmental learning centers who would like to work with students and enthusiasts to develop short poetry films in the parks where they reside.
(*This image is related to one of the recent field studies Muthupandiyan has done for the illuminated poetry project during her ARTservancy residency.)
2) What are 1-2 creative goals you have set for yourself this year?
I am a multimedia creative so this is an expansive question! My creative compass is currently directing me in four discrete directions as a public humanities creative, a poet, an illustrator and an essayist.
First, I’ll be guiding Poetry in the Parks as it collaborates with the National Writing Project and the National Park System during their annual Write Out project in October. I am looking forward to getting more people writing in, about and from the land through our efforts.
Second, I have had the great honor of being named an artist in residence through ARTServancy through 2024. ARTservancy is a partnership between Gallery 224 the Ozaukee Washington Land Trust, the River Revitalization Foundation, the Western Great Lakes Bird and Bat Observatory, Tall Pines Conservancy and the Milwaukee Area Land Conservancy. The program’s mission is to promote the visionary work of Wisconsin artists and conservationists.
Specializing in illustrated poetry, I have chosen to do my residency at the UWM at Waukesha Field Station, which is an amazing environmental educational center and restored prairie. I will use the residency to develop poetry mandalas inspired by the land and by those who have worked so very hard to restore and protect it over the past half century. A gallery show featuring the culmination of the year's work will be scheduled in 2024.
Third, I am working on a collection of travel essays with a philosophical bent. The collection explores the ways by which pilgrimage on the Camino de Santiago invites the pilgrim into a spiritual encounter with the land and all of creation. The manuscript, which is the product of many amazing conversations and encounters with many amazing pilgrims, also includes much reflection about my own experiences as a pilgrim. It’s almost done; I am hoping this is the year.
3) How do you continually seek out or discover new inspiration for your writing?
I don’t actually know—I just was born reverent, curious and with an orientation toward stillness and slowness. All four factors have helped me to become someone who observes the natural world as well as engages with others with profound respect and ongoing interest.
In part, I discover new inspiration in the people I meet. The same is true of the land communities where they stake their futures and perform their rituals that provide seat to their memories. Humanity’s root system is no different than those of the trees which provide us with shelter, strength and sustenance. We are inextricably intertwined in a web of influences and relation—in ways invisible and unseen. The fact of it is marvelous, awe inspiring, plus frankly, understated and under-appreciated.
Writers come with a motley crew of motives and instigations. I guess mine is just to remind myself and others how very beautiful and sacred the whole of everything is.
(*Another image representative of a field study Muthupandiyan has done for the illuminated poetry project during her ARTservancy residency.)
4) Share 2 to 3 exhibitions, concerts, books, spoken word events and/or films you would like to check out in the coming months.
I am a phenomenologist because I study phenomena as I experience them. So I actually try to stay away from books and films that are in any way related to my writing when I am writing. This is because I find—as with “Woodlight”— that words linger like phantasma in my head long after I read them. I want to make sure that any claims of my experience, and even my sense of the experience itself, isn’t informed by others’ ideas.
However, I do look forward to seeing the Kwame Brathwaite photography exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago this spring, followed by my fellow ARTservancy residents’ work at Gallery 224 this coming fall and winter. And, of course later this summer, the prairie in full bloom at the The University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee at Waukesha Field Station. There’s no exhibition quite like it!
(*Individuals interested in participating in a Poetry in the Parks project, or would like to develop a film within a land community they belong to, are welcome to contact Meg Muthupandiyan at poetryintheparks@gmail.com.)