River Liturgies
A Conversation with Michael Garrigan
In the years following the start of the pandemic, the National Park Services saw a drastic increase in visitors across national parks and monuments. If you glimpsed at the lives of your friends or relatives on social media, or if you read an article about the best things to do during the summer, being outdoors most likely played a significant part in how people were spending their time. For some, this was their first opportunity to explore the trails at the Rocky Mountains, or to trek through the Narrows at Zion National Park. For others, it was more than just a vacation, but an experience that shifted their perspective to what connections could be made with their surroundings on a deeper level. For Michael Garrigan, nature is always within reach, and you only need to immerse yourself in a few pages of his newest collection, River, Amen (Homebound Publications, 2023) to understand how necessary it is to live a life that is spiritually connected with the earth and all it has to offer. River, Amen creates conversations about our place in the world. Here, rivers become reminders of celebration and atonement. Fishing offers as much self-reflection as it does self-fulfillment. And conversing with a companion by a campfire after a long day brings back moments of simplicity, acceptance, and peace.
I was fortunate enough to sit with Michael to discuss River, Amen and so much more.
Esteban Rodriguez: Michael, thank you for this opportunity. Your poem, “Father Joe,” appeared in our very own EcoTheo Review, which we were honored to have in our pages. Can you talk more about the poem and how it made its way into your collection, River, Amen?
Michael Garrigan: Father Joe was a very important person in my life. He gave me my first communion and, in some ways, showed me that transubstantiation is more than just bread and wine turning into body and blood, that it’s a daily occurence, something that is always happening. I was an altar boy for years and as much as I loathed going to church most Sunday mornings, I loved when I got to hold the Bible open for him to read from. It was a deliberate act of creation that I had never experienced before, watching someone take words and turn them into something holy. It was my first taste of poetry, in a lot of ways, and it was sacred. He also showed me that the profane and the ordinary can be sacred; he would swear under his breath all the time whenever the choir started too soon or someone he didn’t particularly like walked through the doors, which I absolutely loved as a young boy. To hear this giant man dressed in formal robes singing hymns and preaching the word of God while muttering swear words that only I could hear was such a beautiful moment. There was a closeness there, an intimacy to a God I’m always searching for.
So much of this collection is an examination of my spirituality and how I’ve wrestled with the church’s failings (which pushed me away from any sort of spiritual practice for years). There are poems like “Searching the Database of Priests Accused of Sexual Assault” and “Bully Pulpit” that explore the perversion of faith and the abuse of power in churches that I felt I needed to write in order to come to terms with my Catholic upbringing; however, I wanted to write a poem about Father Joe to honor him and the positive influence he had on my spiritual journey. I held his memory close as I built this collection and tried to reclaim my faith.
In the Acknowledgments page, you mention that in 2021 you were Artist-in-Residence for The Bob Marshall Wilderness Complex. How was your experience in the Flathead National Forest? What inspiration did it provide for your writing and for your collection?
It was such an incredible experience! I was able to spend two weeks alone in a backcountry, off-the-grid cabin pretty far back in the wilderness. I had never spent so much time alone like that and it’s something I’m still processing. The Bob is such an amazing wilderness area -- mountainous, full of grizzlies and wild trout and huckleberries. I have always had a deep connection to the backcountry ever since I spent three years working on trail crews after graduating college and I really wanted to have time to immerse myself in one particular place as I worked on finishing this book. I explore a lot of what I call “post-industrial wilderness” and the rewilding of these industrial areas of Pennsylvania, but I wanted to balance that out with time spent in “true” wilderness areas. This Artist Residency gave me that opportunity to be in and of a place that is wild and free from a lot of human encroachment. It gave me a good foil for all the ragged, torn coal country I was writing from.
I sat on this crumbling ledge overlooking the river every morning and evening watching the ridgeline and water and wrote. Some of that writing was generative, and some of it was revising this book. It gave me the time to sit with these poems, to hear how they spoke to each other, and to see how they shaped each other outside of the watershed in which they were written. I am still working on a lot of the poems that came out of that experience and they are already shaping my next collection. For example, I met Dead Elk out there along the Middlefork of the Flathead River one morning on a hike and he has turned into a long suite of poems that I’m still traveling down. I’m not sure where he’ll take me, but I know those two weeks alone in the backcountry will continue shaping who I am and what I’m writing for years. I will always be grateful for that time and that opportunity.
Spruce Creek Cabin / Middle Fork of the Flathead River
It sounds like it was a really enlightening and rewarding experience! I love hiking and exploring National Parks I’ve never been to before (as well as revisiting ones I have), but I can’t help but think of that oftentimes people tend to see more rural and little visited landscapes as wholly separate from our everyday lives, especially for individuals who live in larger cities where access to parks or trails isn’t so easily accessible. In “The Poet Stumbles Upon a Used Hypodermic Needle While Fishing in Schuylkill County,” we see the ways in which the image of a needle (and thereby an addiction) shockingly contrasts with a poet’s time fishing:
…and he wonders if this is from the guy
he saw crawl from the tent downstream behind the burnt-out hotel
which makes him think about the economy and how there used to be jobs
around here back when these woods were rusty thin, lining factories burning
In a lot of ways, the two images don’t belong together, even though people live nearby. Nevertheless, worlds always have a tendency to overlap, and I guess what I’m really asking is how you see our relationship with nature at this current moment? What instills fear? What gives you hope?
Yes, our worlds are always overlapping, aren’t they? Fishing takes me to some interesting places. One day I could be exploring a brook trout stream tucked into a ravine so remote with so little access that only a couple of people might see it each year and another day I could be fishing behind a burnt out hotel along a stream tinted orange with acid mine drainage littered with hypodermic needles, styrofoam, and tires. That particular moment you highlight was a turning point for me and how I looked at our relationship with nature. There I was catching these wild trout that somehow survived and in some ways thrived in a stream that has been abandoned and polluted by the industry that used to line its banks. That same industry that used to bring jobs and money to this area, but left and in its absence unemployment, addiction, and water you can’t drink. It’s not all that’s left; though those are the easiest things to notice at times. There is still wilderness there, even in those places, which gives me hope. I fear that we won’t notice these wild places that are right in front of us and in that ignorance we’ll fail to see what is worth protecting, conserving, and connecting to. We don’t need to go to some designated wilderness area out west to be in a wild landscape (though if you get a chance, do it! there are so many incredible places worth exploring…). We can have that relationship to the natural world wherever we are living. We can experience wildness wherever we find ourselves.
My spirituality is directly tied to the landscapes in which I find myself, which is something I didn’t really fully understand until I wrote this collection. The rewilding of the post-industrial areas around me served as a sort of template or model for how I could let my spiritual identity grow, or in some ways return. I think this is what I ultimately fear about our relationship to nature — that we might lose it, that we’ll lose touch of it and we forget how important it is, that we’ll let it become something “other” than us, something that we don’t try to understand, something that we don’t feel is important, something that we always try to shape and bend instead of letting it shape us. Partially because of the pandemic, I started to deliberately explore the ecosystems closest to me and through that I discovered worlds I never knew existed. “Oyster River Love Songs” is a long suite of poems (songs?) spoken (sung?) in the many voices that make up the Susquehanna River, which I live along. To witness the continuous creation of one of the oldest rivers in the world every day is an act of hope. “Post-Industrustrial Wilderness, Rejoice!” is another act of hope that came from that local exploration that pulled me into places I would normally pass over for “wilder” parts of the state; whereas poems like “The Poet Stumbles Upon a Used Hypodermic Needle While Fishing in Schuylkill County” and “Rust Belt Ossuary” are poems that tangle with the overlapping worlds of extraction and resources and fear and hope. I guess that’s where I see our connection to the natural world right now — in those ragged, rewilding ecotones and how we connect with those places.
Pennsylvania “wilderness” vs. Pennsylvania “Post-Industrial Wilderness”
I just want to pause and say that I’m super grateful for your inclusion of such spectacular photographs. It’s amazing to visually experience the places you’ve spent time at, which I hope to one day visit (if anything the photographs are motivating me more). Do you find that the medium of photography inspires in any way? Are there things outside of literature and art that translate to your writing?
Oh thank you so much Esteban! I hope they add some context to my answers. That’s such a great question; Yes, in some ways photographs are an inspiration for me as a writer, but not so much the ones I take. I definitely draw inspiration from other people’s photography, art, writing, and sketches. Honestly, I take a lot of photographs as part of my writing process so I don’t forget details or places I’ve been. Much like how I always keep a little notepad with me to jot down random lines or ideas, photographs function the same way for me. It’s an element of the “gathering” part of the writing process. I use them as a personal Field Guide, especially since I’m terrible at remembering the names of plants and geological structures or trail names and peaks. I love to go back and use that iPhone feature that identifies plants and fungi in order to, hopefully, learn the taxonomy of our world and to make me a better write
Other than literature and art, my writing is definitely heavily influenced by music in that I’m almost always listening to some sort of instrumental music while I write. For some reason, it helps me get into that head space with my writing. Lately, I have grown to really love listening to anything Jeff Parker plays on. He’s a guitarist that creates these incredibly beautiful, layered sonic soundscapes. I find it to be the perfect writing music and I’m sure it creeps into how I write. This may sound odd, but riding my bicycle is a large influence on my writing as well. It’s where I go to work out ideas. The simple mechanics of a bicycle are the perfect medium for my body and mind to get into that place where I can be surprised by an idea or for a poem to start taking shape. And really, all my ventures into the woods and rivers, whether it be through hiking or biking or fly fishing or kayaking, translate into my writing. It is my writing process, in a lot of ways. Without that connection and immersion, I don’t think I’d find my voice as a writer.
I’m so glad you mentioned music because I listen to a lot while writing and working. Can you tell us a little more about what other musicians you listen to?
Oh for sure! I could talk about music all day. It’s such an important part of my life and it inevitably shows up in my writing. I co-wrote a chapbook during the pandemic with a friend, Andrew Jones, called Songenizios: Poems Inspired by Songs which took Kim Addonizio’s sonnet form “sonnezio” and reimagined it with song lyrics. Essentially, Andrew and I made eachother a playlist and then we took a line from each song to build a sonnet. One of the poems from that chapbook ended up in this collection. It was such a fun, long-distance collaboration to do during the early days of the pandemic and it really made it apparent to me that music is a large force in my writing.
I’m beginning to realize that each project I do has a soundtrack. River, Amen definitely has a soundtrack of songs and musicians that I listened to a lot while I was writing it and inevitably “show up” in some way in the book. I don’t think a poem like “Oyster River Love Songs” could have been written without the help of Gunn-Truscinski, especially their album Soundkeeper which pushes me to go into that state of negative capability where you can become anything or something else entirely. Another album that really shaped a lot of my writing in this book is Charlie Parr’s latest album, Last of the Better Days. It came out right before I went into the backcountry for my artist residency and I ended up listening to it almost every evening on my little portable speaker while I sat and watched the sunset over the Middle Fork. I love his ability to build stories in his songs and one in particular, “Rain,” showed up directly in a poem in which I use two of his lines. That album and his songwriting really helped me craft the more narrative threads throughout this collection like the series of Aubades that tell a story. I also went into a deep dive of mostly instrumental “spiritual” jazz like Pharaoh Sanders and Alice Coltrane and Sun Ra which led me to this really great tape called Switched on Ra by Bitchin Bajas. Those were my late night writing records. Nathan Salsburg’s Landwerk albums along with William Tyler’s Vanitas were my morning writing records.
And then there is the music that has been with me a long time that shows up. That rolling lick from “Mountain Jam” by The Allman Brothers, the long meditation of “Old Strange” by Steve Gunn, a Mission of Burma lyric that came from a mixed-tape an ex had given me, all show up in one way or another in “Penobscot Suite.” So even the music that I’m not listening to as I write, but has stuck with me in some way, seems to seep to the surface during the writing process. Now that I think about it Esteban, I guess music is an innate part of all my writing. We are always sourcing from the world around us, pulling from it, adding to the continuous conversation of life and creation around us.
You’ve mentioned to me outside of this interview that you work at a high school. I work at a high school as well, and I know firsthand that it can be a time where students begin the journey of becoming lifelong readers and writers. How has your experience been teaching students at that level? Has it provided inspiration? Are your students acquainted with your poetry?
Even though my first undergrad degree was in Creative Writing, I don’t think I’d be a writer if I wasn’t a teacher. It really wasn’t until I started teaching writing that I realized I was a writer myself. I began writing alongside my students which naturally created a writing routine that has now become a large part of my life. I think it’s important for my students to not only see me as a teacher, but also a writer that is going through the same processes and struggles that they’re going through. I don’t share a lot of my own published poetry, but they do find it since they are teenagers and well, they’re pretty good at online sleuthing. I do share works in progress to show them different parts of the writing process and wow, there’s nothing like having high school students read a draft of a poem and offer feedback. It’s way more unnerving than any graduate level workshop I’ve been a part of. Their authentic honesty is one of the many things I love about teaching 11th and 12th graders. We read a lot of poetry from other living poets in my course as model and mentor texts for their own writing and thinking. I love sharing poetry with them that’s written by people who are experiencing their world.
Honestly Esteban, I’m not sure what else I’d want to do other than be a teacher. Yes, it’s incredibly difficult at times as I’m sure you know and it feels like I’m being asked to do some impossible things sometimes, but there is so much beauty in the alchemy of a classroom and the rich community of ideas that’s created. I’m grateful for my students and for the chance I get each day with them to write and discuss literature. They push me as a thinker and writer and even though I don’t write directly about the teaching experience in my poetry, it inevitably shows up somewhere under the surface or in the syntax just like all the music I listen to or the rides I go on or the rivers I wade. Teaching is as much a part of my life as writing is at this point. They are entwined and feed off each other. Writing and teaching are continuous conversations I am having with the world in order to better understand it and, hopefully, add to it in a meaningful way.
Writing a collection of poetry is oftentimes very methodical, but in the process, the writing can take you in directions you didn’t expect. What poem in your collection, however, really made you step back and say, “Now I’ve got a book”?
Great question Esteban. This book had many lives before it was printed and bound and had a cover. I owe a big thanks to the Editor at EcoTheo, Jason Myers, for the help with the title. He tweeted at some point asking what the first and last words of your WIP were and when I looked at mine, I realized it was River, Amen and that immediately became the title even though I had had a working title for quite some time. Once I settled on that as the title, the threads became apparent.
Throughout the writing of this book I kept coming back to a few foundational poems that I felt captured the threads and themes I was focusing on. However, if I were to choose one poem that came as a surprise and really made everything click it would have to be “Liturgy of Carp Becoming a God.” Once I had that poem, I knew I had a book and that the rest of the poems I’d been writing were actually speaking to each other. Before that poem, I had a lot of separate dialogues, but that poem started a conversation. I think it captures so many of the major threads and themes of the book and, honestly, it came so naturally. It just appeared, which happens very rarely. Most of the drafting of that poem came from going to the Susquehanna River almost every day during that first summer of the pandemic when we were staying close to home, wading into it, stalking carp, and trying to land one with my fly rod. Those actions became a metaphor for what I was trying to do with this collection and that poem became the anchor for the rest of the book. It helped me see how the poems were speaking to one another and which threads I should keep exploring. When it came time to organize the book, it was that poem that dictated the sections and, in a lot of ways, the sequencing.
You mention “Liturgy of Carp Becoming a God” as being the catalyst for the book, and I couldn’t help but go back to the following ending lines of the poem (the speaker, as you mention, is trying to capture carp, which seem to be eluding him):
and haven’t breathed in a few seconds
and you think you finally found the right words to build a prayer
that will be heard and when you exhale they notice you,
because that’s what Gods do, notice,
and they dart off into the deep current and your
palms are left open and once sediment settles
you consider sliding your whole body into water
to become a river-prayer-flag forever caught in current.
That one phrase, “and you think you finally found the right words to build a prayer” stuck with me long after I read it the first time, and the second and third. Are these poems the words for your everyday prayers?
Oh what a great question, Esteban. Short answer, yes. Long answer, yes, yes, yes, yes. Poetry has become prayer for me: writing it, reading it, engaging with it on any level; it has all become prayer. And writing “Liturgy of Carp Becoming a God” made me realize that, which is how and why it became the foundation of this book. Rivers are prayers, poems are prayers, the carp that cannot be caught is a prayer, the groundhog that needs to be skinned for stew is a prayer, the frozen Vermont pond is a prayer. Prayer was not part of my life for so long; I deliberately moved away from it, ignored it, and disparaged it. Dismissing prayer was part of my backlash towards my Catholic upbringing. But through the act of reading and writing poetry, I have begun to pray again. To whom? I’m not sure. I used to think I had to know who I was praying to, but have realized that I can pray to a polluted river just as easily and more authentically than to a specific god. It doesn’t matter who I pray to, just as long as I pray. Prayer has grown from a strictly “god-centered” act to a deliberate “eco-centered” act that places me within the world, not at its center, but part of something much larger than myself, not a transaction but an integration. Poetry has helped me realize that I can pray to and for anything: brook trout, a town on top of a mine that has been on fire since 1962, two men in a Jon boat looking for scraps after a flood and finding community, a cutbank, Solomon seal, an Atlantic salmon reaching for a caddis fly on the surface of the Penobscot River. Poetry has helped me create my own personal spiritual language and I think that’s what prayer is supposed to do, right?
Carp Scales (I eventually caught one, long after I wrote the poem)
There has long been a debate centered on the extent to which a writer should write with a reader in mind. I myself don’t always write strictly for the reader, but I do hope that someone, whether in this country or another, whether in the present or the future, picks up my books and finds some connection with them, however small. Who do you hope has the opportunity to read River, Amen?
I’m the same way Esteban; I don’t always write strictly for the reader or with the reader in mind. Perhaps with my essays, yes, the reader is there, an audience is considered, and I’m writing that prose thinking about how it’ll be read and interacted with. Poetry is different. Maybe it’s because of the way in which poetry happens. Sometimes a poem or an image or thread just appears, you know? As a writer I just have to follow it, not knowing where it’ll take me or what’ll be revealed or what I’ll stumble into, much like the way I explore a river or walk through the woods not knowing what’s living deep in a plunge pool or around the next bend of a trail. Sometimes a poem starts in wonder, sometimes in pain, sometimes in joy, sometimes in the glaring light of the morning sun as I roll out of my tent, sometimes in the peripheral as I drive to work, sometimes while I’m mowing the grass, sometimes while my students and I are having a discussion about some Brian Doyle essay or in the middle hours of writing that doesn’t feel inspired at all — suddenly, a poem! If I think about the reader too early I don’t think I can serve the poem. The reader doesn’t often come into frame until I’m in the revision process. It’s then that I start thinking about how the poem wants to interact with an audience, how it wants to be read, seen, or felt.
I too hope that someone, somewhere finds these poems and gives them a home. I think we write in order to connect with the world, and for people to find our work and read it and connect with it is the ultimate form of praise. We want our prayers to be heard, right? We want our poetry to be read. And that’s all I can hope for, that these poems are heard and read by someone, somewhere.
