Image by Meredith Miller, poem by MJ Millington. Winner of the Vermont Studio Center Broadside Competition 2020.
Pairs with my poem “Rabbitwise.”
Pairs with my poem “Rabbitwise.”
Image by Meredith Miller, poem by MJ Millington.
Featuring the poet in the guise of a loon. Photograph by Meredith Miller, hand-watercolored by MJ Millington. Pairs with my poem “The Loon One Night.”
Pairs with my poem “Zarafa, 1827.” The French newspaper clipping in the center of the image is an account of the famous giraffe who walked to Paris in 1827; my poem explores her story.
A portrait of Her Highness, whose story I explore in my poem “Zarafa, 1827.”
Image by Meredith Miller, poem by MJ Millington. The poem explores the myth of Buffalo as a shape-shifter.
Pairs with my poem “Butterfly Effect.”
Pairs with my poem “Worth.”
Pairs with my poem “Consider the Leopards of the Veld,” a play on Matthew 6:28, where we’re asked to consider the lilies of the field.
Pairs with my poem “Consider the Leopards of the Veld,” a play on Matthew 6:28, where we’re asked to consider the lilies of the field.
Pairs with my poem “Camels to the Right of Them,” a tribute to the camels forced into service during the Crimean War—with a hint of Tennyson’s “Charge of the Light Brigade” for good measure.
The Dreaming Animals playlist contains recordings of me reading all the poems in this series. Individual poem recordings are accessible through their respective QR codes.
Pairs with my poem “Grizzly Bears’ Picnic.”
Pairs with my poem “Let Sleeping Bones Lie,” which was inspired by a particular fossil held by the Peabody Museum at Yale University—an extinct species of rhinoceros that once roamed North America, Teleoceras major.
From the Natuurkundige verhandelingen van Petrus Camper … Amsterdam, 1782. Used in Rhino Hero.
Image by Meredith Miller, poem by MJ Millington. The poem explores the human darkness that is the other side of William Blake’s famous poem, “The Tyger.”
Pairs with my poem “To Make a Bee (After Emily Dickinson).”
Pairs with my poem “To Make a Bee (After Emily Dickinson).”
Featuring the photographer in the guise of a cat. Pairs with my poem “Sphinx.”
This poem incorporates a traditional 19th-century whaling ballad called “Farewell to Tarwathie,” which tells the story of men hunting whales off the coast of Greenland. But it made me think, What does the whale sing of as it swims? This poem explores the counterpoint between those singers.
Pairs with my poem “Shanty,” which incorporates a traditional whaling ballad.
Pairs with my poem “Shadows in the Deep.”
Pairs with my poem “The Idea of a Moose,” about our love of putting animals on mugs and tee shirts, at the same time that we seem not to care much about what happens to them in real life.
Pairs with my poem “Sea Creatures.”
