by Wendy MacIntyre

September 6, 2017

I have been reading John Berger’s Portraits, a gathering of his insightful readings on artistic creation spanning the breadth of Western civilization, from the prehistoric animal portraits in the Chauvet Caves to artists of our time. In his tribute to the work of British painter, Yvonne Barlow, who died in 2017 mere months after Berger’s own passing, I found them staring in wonder at a painting I love which plays a major part in my novel, Hunting Piero. This artwork, which hangs in the National Gallery in London, is Piero di Cosimo’s Satyr Mourning a Dead Nymph. In my novel my principal female character, Agnes Vane, experiences a personal salvation through this painting, both literally and figuratively. read more

Marianne Moore’s praise-poem to the pangolin (“impressive animal and toiler of whom we seldom hear”) is a work I often revisit for its luminous vision of a world where humans’ relations with animals are grounded in respect and wonder. This exquisite poem was also my first introduction to the Asian and African anteater whose covering of super-hard, delicately overlapping scales makes it unique among the world’s mammals.

Tragically, the huge demand for these scales in Asian traditional medicine has made the pangolin the most hunted animal on Earth, the victim of illegal poaching and a thriving black market trade. This terrible fate would have made Moore heartsick, for it is a genuine love of this remarkable creature that animates her poem. As readers, we absorb her delight in the pangolin’s artichoke-like shape; its patient nocturnal hunting skills, solitary, peaceable, persistent character and the armature of sting-proof scales so resistant not even a lion can bite through them. We feel her wonder at this “night miniature artist engineer,” “this near artichoke with head and legs/and grit-equipped gizzard.” (Because the pangolin has no teeth, it swallows stones to grind up the ants that are its main sustenance.) read more

My first reaction on reading a review of Charles Foster’s Being a Beast: Adventures across the Species Divide was amazed laughter. The idea of a middle-aged man attempting to live like a badger, sleeping all day in a tunnel underground, crawling through the woods on all fours at night in search of sustenance; or haunting the river’s depths, trying to catch fish in his teeth like an otter, struck me as courageous, yet absurd.

When I actually read Foster’s book, what I found was a deeply moral work: a frank and often funny account of the demanding physical and emotional attempts he made to enter the day-to-day reality of four other species: badger, otter, urban fox and red deer. His adventures, he explains, reflect the principle of “theory of mind” — the ability to think oneself into another person’s position; in his case, not just putting himself in someone else’s shoes, but into another creature’s hooves, pads or fins. read more

June 17, 2017

On Thursday, I had the good fortune to be approaching Carleton Place’s tiny Gillies Bridge just as a woman was coming towards me, pushing a huge cage on wheels. As she came closer, I saw a flash of intense aquamarine. Closer still, and I realized she was transporting a magnificent parrot, perhaps two feet high. I asked if I might look at him and she kindly stopped so I could do so. She told me his name was Cooper and that he lived at the parrot sanctuary on Industrial Avenue. She was taking him out for the fresh air and his daily dose of Vitamin D. Because Cooper was staring straight ahead, I was able to admire the strong curve of his gleaming dark-brown beak and round white eyes. He appeared very content to be out on his tour of the bridge across the turbulent river and around town. read more

Recently, I have been reading John Berger’s Bento’s Sketchbook: How does the impulse to draw something begin? A little treasure box of his own drawings, ruminations and gentle stories about his neighbours and encounters, this wise, humane book was inspired by the 17^th-century philosopher, Benedict (Bento) Spinoza, who apparently always carried a sketchbook with him. Although Spinoza’s sketchbook has never been found, John Berger’s tribute, with its many revelations on the arts of drawing and storytelling, human perception and interconnection, is a wonderful artifact in itself. Throughout the text, he weaves in resonant quotations from Spinoza’s Ethics. read more

This morning I saw the most intriguing shadow effect on the bedroom wall, with the lacy curtain (often in peril as a cat ambush station), slanted over the nine squares of the upper half of the window. The delicacy and precision of the shadow shapes made me want to draw them. I wonder if this will happen eventually; that I will try to take up a pencil again and make a picture of some sort, however clumsy. I do still write my first drafts of my fiction long-hand with pen on paper. This “old-fashioned” practice is strongly connected to my childhood love of drawing, and my conviction that my thought flows more readily through small written marks on a page than through touching a computer keyboard. So once again, I find myself reflecting on the close affinity between drawing and writing. read more