Write a poem about an endangered animal

A writing process I follow with more thoroughly researched and conceptualized poetry on endangered species

Nov 16, 2023

Dear hopeful reader,

Years ago I started a poetry project on endangered animals. I haven’t advanced much with it because it requires a lot of research and I tend to jump from one writing to the next and back on the whims of my inspiration, and what health crises I go through.

I recently had a thought of resuming the project. The last poem I wanted to write was going to be about the condor. I even saved links I would reference for my research and words I may use in the piece. Carrion could be one of them.

I also wrote down which other animals I would write about—the ocelot, the vaquita, the pangolin, among others. While I wrote about honey bees, elephants, and blue whales, I thought I should branch out to more obscure animals. I thought it would be insightful for me, and I hope for others, to learn more on threatened animals we hardly know anything about and what threats they face to the point of endangerment or, worse, extinction.

There’s a writing process I follow when it comes to more thoroughly researched and conceptualized poetry as opposed to poems that are more easily written thanks to fever-dream states and inspiration showers.

I thought of sharing it with you today in case you’re also writing about endangered species and want to follow a more structured path. Feel free to branch out, create your own, and share your way of writing with others in the comments below!

Also read: Write tender poems and feel how your heart swells with love and gratitude

Research

Research may be the easiest part in writing a poem about an endangered animal, at least for me it was the case. There’s not much to it except looking for the most updated information on the said animal from sources that study it closely; that may be organizations, scientists, conservationists, among others.

Since you’re crafting poetry, you can even search for essays that explore the endangered species more narratively or from a different standpoint than scientific (e.g.: economical or cultural). Perhaps there are poems about your chosen animal that can creatively expand your horizons or non-fiction pieces discussing unbelievable encounters with it.

You can look for information broadly or conduct more focused research. For example, after doing surface-level investigation for my poem “The Blue Whale’s Song,” I settled on delving into the blue whales’ colossal anatomy and style of song; what is killing the species; and why they beach themselves.

Creative process

The creative process involves choosing the message you want your poem to convey. It could be to tell a heart-rending story of an endangered species to incite an emotional, empathetic response in the reader. Or, it could be a rebuttal to something you read in order to inform about the other side of a particular situation encompassing the animal in question.

The intent may not be clear to you immediately, and you may gain clarity only as you’re working out the form of your poem. Don’t worry if it doesn’t come to you right away. It will in time, I promise! I find what facilitates the decision is to write in a form that is highly defined, structured, and/or limited.

For example, a senryū is a three-line poem comprising 17 syllables with a pattern of 5-7-5. The poetic form focuses on human frailty from a humorous point of view. The style can be satirical, ironic, or hyperbolic.

To write about your chosen endangered animal, you’d have to center a human in your senryū and make the poem funny over serious, although a certain ironic sadness can be present. With this kind of limitation upon limitation there’s more focus and groundedness too.

While the intent and form of “The Blue Whale’s Song” were challenging for me to determine at first, the case for “Honey Hives” was much simpler. I was inspired by a Forbes article, since then republished at Genetic Literacy Project, to create a found poem out of noteworthy words from the article. A message, and therefore a stance, was easily revealed while collating those words and blacking out the ones that didn’t seem significant.

Found poems are limited in that you source other texts to create them, but there’s enough freedom in the creative approach and purpose whether you choose to do blackout, erasure, or cut-up poetry, with your own additions or not. Likewise, working on a found poem can be a good exercise against writer’s block.

Also read: On video games, humanity, loneliness, the personal, and Death Stranding at the heart of it all

Writing process

Because writing is a fairly personal process, I’m not going to tell you how to write your poem. Your intent and chosen poetic form should be your guide. However, I’ll tell you how “The Blue Whale’s Song” came to be, should that help you navigate through this step.

I was immensely inspired by Hideo Kojima’s Death Stranding, even before it released. (Of course I have to talk about DS every chance I get; in case you’re not aware, I’m obsessed with this unbelievable game.) Particularly the first trailer left me stunned, speechless, seeking answers. The stark image of the poor beached whales, among other sea creatures, stuck with me, Low Roar’s haunting lyrics looping in my mind to this day:

Soon I’ll come around
Lost and never found
Waiting for my words
Seen but never heard
Buried underground

Because the blue whale is quite the sonic marine mammal, I knew I wanted to emphasize its musicality in my piece. At first, I thought to create a found poem out of lines from songs referencing the sea, whales, and hubris. However as fun as this experiment was, the found poem read as disjointed and nonsensical. Nonetheless, it wasn’t all for naught.

Following the experiment, my brain felt agile enough to work out how to proceed with the writing. After some deliberation, I decided to write a poem in three parts, a triptych if you will.

In each act, I would invite the reader to experience the majesty of what a blue whale is and the tremendous loss when one of them dies and the rest beach themselves. The third act references songs too, so in a way it’s a found experiment with others’ lyrics and my words coming together and merging as one. Interestingly, it’s also the most rhythmic stanza of all.

The line “Are you looking for the whales?” references a-ha’s We’re Looking for the Whales. Tori Amos’ words “Knowledge sown in Gaia’s bones” from Up The Creek clung to me, so I wrote the line “how Gaia’s fury ripples waves” in response. Breton’s Get Well Soon and Low Roar’s Easy Way Out were instrumental in creating the lines “how it all started / & can’t be turned.”

Of course I had to put the words “death stranding” as my love note to Kojima and DS. Whether it makes sense is anyone’s guess. I didn’t even know what it meant at the time. Frankly, I wouldn’t be able to tell you what death stranding is concretely even today. I would encourage to play the game.

Final product

The result:

The Blue Whale’s Song

While “The Blue Whale’s Song” recites a narrative of blue whales dying out due to human hubris and nature becoming off-balance, the message overall invites to reflect on actions that catalyze butterfly effect type of consequences, and how eventually there may not be a way out or a way to before.

Conclusion

In a nutshell, my more structured process to writing a poem about an endangered species involves:

Picking and researching an endangered species
Highlighting words and characteristics that stand out
Choosing the intent and poetic form
Writing the poem with intent and form guiding me

If you run into a road block on such a project or generally, I recommend reading literary works like poems and stories to get you out. Watching an artistic movie or playing a mind-bending game can be inspiring. You never know where your next idea may come from, so consume what you can as much as you can. As mentioned above, creating found poems can help with writer’s block.

What is your writing process like? Any tips on writer’s block?

Yours hopefully,

Nadia

A tip for me? Why thank you!