- 7 days ago
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About the Work: Andrea England
In our “About the Work” series, Olga Mexina asks recent contributors for insight into their writing or for current sources of inspiration. Read Andrea England's work in SER Vol. 43.2.
“Self Portrait as a Wind Turbine Blade in the Midwest”
Personal geographies figure heavily in my work, and “Self Portrait as a Wind Turbine Blade in the Midwest” is no different. In 2016, wind turbines were erected on our family farm, surrounding the town where I grew up. People were upset, and excited about it for varying reasons. To look out from a porch or a combine was changed forever—no darkness because of the blinking lights, a constant whoosh of blades. My best friend’s mother, Tootsie, at 90 years old, in response to my saying, “I don’t think I’ll ever get used to them,” said, “You know, a body gets used to hanging.” It is true. We often become stuck in our geographies, which always include their ideologies, their social economics, and their cultural pasts. It is hard for people to change their views, to leave the comfort zone of the “small pond,” as my father used to say.
This poem stewed in my head for at least a year before it showed up on the page, in a time when I was exploring the idea of the self-portrait. The wind turbines will be there for thirty years according to contract (and then what?), and they run on a pretty tight schedule. Their fate has been decided for them. I utilized couplets in the poem to show the intimate relationship between the paths we choose, and the paths which are chosen for us, as well as the parallel lives that I am sure we are living somewhere else.
ANDREA ENGLAND is the recent recipient of the 2024 Patricia Dobler Award, co-editor of Scientists and Poets #Resist (Brill, 2019) the author of Other Geographies (Creative Justice Press, 2017), and Inventory of a Field (FLP, 2014). Her work is forthcoming in the I-70 Review, Rising From the Ashes: Musings on Menopause, The Nature of Our Times, The Pittsburgh Quarterly, and Madwomen From the Attic. She is an adjunct for Southern New Hampshire University COCE, and the Writing Specialist for Western Michigan University's athletic department.