“Stockmen”
Collaborators’ Q&A
What inspired you to bring your work to Broadsided?
Poet Pepper Trail: My career in natural science trained me to be an observer, and my poems often grow from images–or sometimes are direct responses to photographs of mine. So I love the combination of word and image that is the heart of Broadsided.
What drew you to create a visual response to this poem, in particular?
Artist Millian Pham Lien Giang: The poem makes me think of the sunk-cost fallacy and how easy it is to continue doing what you’re doing simply for fear of wasting investment. The dull looks of humans and animals allude to resignation and acceptance of pain and drudgery, and suggests a lifeless life of compliance.
How did this poem come to be?
Poet Pepper Trail: I spend a lot of time in the cattle country of eastern Oregon, and am all too familiar with the ecological devastation done by overgrazing. But I also respect ranchers, for their hard work and devotion to that life. This is the tragedy of the West: destruction brought about by a hero’s fatal flaw. A lot to try to express in a short poem!
How did this image come to be?
Artist Millian Pham Lien Giang: I thought about this contrast between dullness and brightness, how eyes could be wet but dull. It was not in the actual brightness of a material itself such as iridescent fabric used to make the eyes in this piece, but in the shape of those eyes that cause them to appear dull. I looked at multiple images of cow eyes to get this right, and pushed them toward feelings of unease by orienting each differently.
What did you think an artist would pick up on from your poem? Does the artist’s response make you see the poem differently?
Poet Pepper Trail: I associate ranch country with wide-open spaces, and so Millian Pham’s dark, claustrophobic image was a surprise–in the best way. It captures the constraints binding ranchers to their cattle, perpetuating the tragedy (as I see it) of that bargain. And those eyes, dull as river stones!
When you consider the full folio of work from this issue, what questions, observations, or connections arise for you?
Artist Millian Pham Lien Giang: Many of the poems contain difficult truths but the art for each is very bright and colorful except for this one, yet each one is executed so differently that I enjoy the variety of artistic responses.
Poet Pepper Trail: There is such wonderful diversity here, both in the words and the images, but I do see a common thread: yearning. As humans, we yearn for connection, for some resolution (or at least recognition) of our often conflicting desires–and this folio chronicles our struggles.
What question would you like to ask your collaborator?
Poet to Artist: Millian, I’m fascinated by how you bring your diverse background to your art, which I’ve admired online. I see that you received your BFA from Oklahoma, so you’ve spent time in the West (though perhaps more in oil country than cattle country). Did your experiences there influence your response to my poem?
Artist Millian Pham Lien Giang: After living in Tulsa, Oklahoma for 17 years and traveling to eastern Texas to visit family and relatives during that time, I’m quite familiar with clumps of oak trees amid vastness, flatness, then gently rolling hills as the wind whips against the skin in hot and cold weather. I hope I captured that sense of isolation and exposure of the prairie at night.
Artist to Poet: What motivated you to write about this?
Poet Pepper Trail: As an ecologist and long-time resident of Oregon, I am very familiar with the damage caused by overgrazing, including erosion, soil compaction, elimination of native perennial grasses and their replacement by invasive annual grasses. Most livestock operations in the arid West depend on access to public lands, which is leased to ranchers at extremely low cost. In my opinion, this is not responsible stewardship of these precious and fragile lands, which belong to all Americans. At the same time, I know and respect the hard work, tenacity, and commitment to place that characterize ranching communities. This poem attempts to express both perspectives.
Did anything shift for you or come into new light as you began working on your visual response?
Artist Millian Pham Lien Giang: Originally I thought the poem was focused on animal resignation and that was partially taken up by the human subjects. But a close reading and deeper thinking led me to believe that the humans suffer as much as the animals. They are interlinked in their lives. The shape of cowhide overlapping these houses suggests this entanglement.
Have you ever written work that has been inspired by visual art?
Poet Pepper Trail: As mentioned above, I regularly pair my poems (especially haiku or other short forms) with my own photographs. Beyond that, I have written a number of ekphrastic poems, both in response to “classic” artists (for example, Gauguin and Picasso) and to the work created by my artist son Sage Trail.
Describe your dream “Vectorization”—where, in your wildest dreams, would you most like to see this broadside posted in the world?
Poet Pepper Trail: In libraries in the cattle towns named in the poem: Madras, Vermillion, Bonanza. Based on my experience in conversation with ranchers, the public reaction would be defensive or dismissive, but my hope is that in private there might be some recognition and reflection.
Artist Millian Pham Lien Giang: At a stockyard.
If this Broadsided collaboration were a type of weather, what would it be?
Poet Pepper Trail: A high-desert dust storm.
Artist Millian Pham Lien Giang: A dust storm.
Do you have a favorite, generative prompt for artists or writers you’d like to share?
Poet Pepper Trail: Write while walking (well, you can stop to jot things down). For me, the walk would be through nature, letting objects or organisms catch my eye, trigger connections, unearth memories. But it could be in any setting that resonates. The rhythm of walking lends itself to poetry, helps words arrange themselves on the page.
Artist Millian Pham Lien Giang: Make a list of subjects. Make a list of adjectives. Combine subjects and adjectives and see where sketching will end up.
Read any good books lately?
Poet Pepper Trail: Grey Bees, by the Ukrainian novelist Andrey Kurkov–a quiet, profound meditation on the madness of war. And the poetry collection Swift, by David Baker.
Artist Millian Pham Lien Giang: I really enjoyed the Imperial Radch series by Ann Leckie.
Seen any good art lately?
Poet Pepper Trail: I recently visited the Palmer Museum of Art at Penn State, where I saw a Georgia O’Keefe that was new to me: Lake George, a landscape of water and low mountains in green and gray, reduced to elemental forms. And powerful in a completely different way, Economies of Scale, by Pam Longobardi: a linear arrangement of bits of plastic pollution, increasing in size from tiny nurdles to a hulking fishing buoy. It took up an entire wall–as this pollution threatens the entire ocean.
Artist Millian Pham Lien Giang: My department recently had the annual juried student exhibition. It was good to celebrate the hard work of many students, faculty, and staff toward teaching, learning, and producing amazing artworks.
Anything else?
Poet Pepper Trail: I look forward to reading the responses of all the other writers and artists to the questions posed here–which I’m sure will be as varied as their poems and their art.