2016 Grayson Books Chapbook Competition

Owling by Jeredith Merrin

Superstition Review

Owling by Jeredith Merrin CoverGrayson Books recently published Jeredith Merrin’s chapbook, Owling. Owling won the 2016 Grayson Books Chapbook Competition.

Jeredith describes her book as follows:

The naturalist John Muir wrote: “When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe.” In my new chapbook project, each Owl species is observed/described for its own sake, and each species also “hitches” to something else, some set of human behaviors or concerns.  Each owl–who knows how these things happen?–has led me somewhere I didn’t know I was going and has suggested its own form. I have always been interested in natural history as well as psychology, and would like to think this has resulted in an outward- as well as inward-looking poetry.

Below is one of the poems from Owling  (originally published in Zoomorphic and now through Grayson Books).

The Maned Owl
(Jubula lettii:  classified [2013] as “Data Deficient”
by the International Union for Conservation of Nature)
 .
About the maned owl
there is little to tell
because little is known.
It gets its leonine name
from bushy, face-framing
ear tufts. It lives
in Gambon, Cameroon,
Liberia, the Congo
(in what numbers we don’t know),
in closed-canopy rainforest.
Its habits are secretive
and nocturnal.  Presumably,
given heavy lumbering,
its survival’s at risk.
About reproduction and diet,
information is scant.
Its call may be
(we’re not sure)
a low, dove-like coo.
As is the case with
the wide coral reefs,
or with each creature’s
closed-canopy mind,
or with almost anyone’s
mother or father,
too little is known about them.
And then they’re gone.

 

Owling is available online from Grayson Books and Amazon. It is also available at Changing Hands.