In Nature's Arms, Then Ours
A collection of poems
by Alex Leung
Overview
Alex submitted a Zine titled In Nature's Arms, Then Ours for his Year 10 English Task 1, assessed under the unit Brute Beauty and Valour. The task required three original poems, visual elements, and a 400–500 word reflection. Alex received 20/20 — a top A across all three marking criteria: Composition of Poetry, Visual Elements, and Reflection.
The zine's thematic arc moves from reverence to destruction: Poem 1 romanticises nature as a divine force; Poems 2 and 3 depict its exploitation through the Great Potato Famine and the destructive effects of industrialisation. The reflection articulates this arc with precision, connecting formal choices to the studied texts of Hopkins and Okpik.
In Nature’s Arms
Beyond my rooted, waning self, they'd rise,
Loamy wafts, charged with petrichor's enchant,
Verdant and vast, did my vision comprise,
Of lush landscapes words could never supplant.
Splitting the land - a stream of purity,
Siphoning its colour from up above.
Amongst these twin flames of divinity,
Was westward fleeing, fleeting cotes of doves.
As luminous dimming rays struck my palms,
Beyond my periphery - darkness, black as depth.
Yet it did not set off any alarms,
For I had synthesised my final breath.
In nature's arms, her sweet, gentle caress,
She's granted me comfort - eternal rest.Pandemonium
Lifeblood for peasants, pervasively prominent with the poor
Gilded nuggets of white gold to the gaudy,
For it was opportunity they saw.
Once fertile soil had gone inert
As varietal white tubers had overgrown,
Unwillingly overtook all dirt.
Nature's soil had eroded
Nature's water became polluted
Nature's nutrients had been negated
Nature's fury grew fervent until
Her fury took flight, in the form of a blight.
The plague of retribution was dispersed amidst her winds
Imbued inside her gifts to 'venge the abuse of her kin
Pandemonium perpetrated partakers of the presumably poison-less potato
Chattering. Clamouring. Churning. Yearning. Sustenance. Hunger.
Grating screams and shrills of the sadly susceptible, for
Their lifeblood lay lifeless, starved, shrivelled and malnourished.Tears of the Rhododendron
The figures came, expanded like cumulostratuses,
Flooded the lands with their exploitative apparatuses.
Encircling the ground which their flagpole stood on,
Like black moths to a flame, was an eclipse of rhododendron.
Wept they did, tears of tar, for Pandora's Box now laid slightly ajar.
The figures
Flattened hills, razed plains, oversowed seeds and shipped species that scrapped,
squabbled and spat on the soil; and logged until there was no more.
Even as begonias blossomed, overgrew the now half dead, crumbling, sterile, inert.
Dirt; like the heavens gifted the graveyard of bilious sallow a veil of vitality,
They did not heed, and began to weed.
Rhododendron returned, necromanced from rotten begonias.
Weeping again, their tears of tar amassing and alloying into an oncoming storm of liquid pneumonias.
Reflection
My zine In Nature's Arms, Then Ours attempts to evoke emotion and provoke change by serving as a powerful wake-up call to those blind to the dangers of prioritising profit over environmental sustainability. By romanticising nature in my first poem, followed by humanity's defiling of it in the second and third poems, I intended to prompt readers to feel attachment, fear, guilt and outrage as they progressed through the zine, thus provoking change through emotional consequence instead of direct action.
"In Nature's Arms" takes the structure of an ekphrastic sonnet. Drawing inspiration from Wordsworth's "I Wandered Lonely As a Cloud", I sought to romanticise nature as a divine and serene force. Through divine imagery like "twin flames of divinity" describing the skies and bodies of water, nature is established as sacred. In tandem with the visual and olfactory imagery throughout the first two quatrains and final couplet, this fosters attachment between the reader and nature — a deliberate preemptive decision to make the violations in the following poems feel tragic.
"Pandemonium" retells the Great Potato Famine, depicting the repercussions of a profit-centred mindset that ignores sustainability. The combination of the anaphora of "Nature" in lines 7–10 alongside auditory elements borrowed from Hopkins' "The Windhover", most notably the usage of plosion in the line "Pandemonium perpetrated partakers of the presumably poison-less potato", builds and carries momentum. It also enunciates and serves as a point of release for the sense of spiralling chaos created through the vivid auditory imagery/cacophony shown in the lines "Chattering. Clamouring. Churning. Yearning." and the poem's fractured structure and visual composition. It lacks stable rhythm and consistent line length, with an initial hint of rhyme that gradually fades making for a more discordant reading experience.
Meanwhile, "Tears of Tar" directly criticises industrialisation. Alongside the aforementioned auditory elements from "The Windhover" throughout the third stanza, the poem draws influence from Okpik's "If Oil Is Drilled in Bristol Bay" through its social commentary. Humanity — dehumanised as "figures" — receives two warnings about environmental harm from nature, symbolised through begonias and rhododendrons appearing under miraculous circumstances. The entirety of the third stanza captures the persona's frustration regarding humanity's ignorance through purposeful isolated lineation before and after shifting into prose poetry that contains two dense, cascading clauses with no punctuation. This syntactic shift transforms the poem into a drawn out, raw, rant-like expression towards environmental neglect, allowing for a more evocative message of exasperation and resentment to resonate with the reader. The form of prose poetry also feels expansive and engulfing, emulating the nature of industrialism in and of itself.
Although "In Nature's Arms" establishes nature as sacred, it also depicts a dying man afforded a peaceful death within its embrace. Foreshadowing of an Earth that has been abused and discarded is present through doves — symbols of peace and purity — being depicted as "fleeing and fleeting", while the use of "cotes" instead of "flock" or "bevy" suggests captivity. This metaphor implies the encroaching pursuers, described as "darkness — black as depth", represent humanity. Despite recognising this impending threat, the persona dies serenely in nature's embrace, contrasting with the industrialised future in "Tears of Tar", where death looms as an agonising "oncoming storm of liquid pneumonias".
As a whole, my zine and poems "In Nature's Arms", "Pandemonium" and "Tears of Tar" seek to awaken readers to the harm caused by prioritising industrialisation and capitalism over environmental sustainability by preemptively forging a bond between the reader and the natural world.
My zine In Nature's Arms, Then Ours attempts to evoke emotion and provoke change by serving as a powerful wake-up call to those blind to the dangers of prioritising profit over environmental sustainability. By romanticising nature in my first poem, followed by humanity's defiling of it in the second and third poems, I intended to prompt readers to feel attachment, fear, guilt and outrage as they progressed through the zine, thus provoking change through emotional consequence instead of direct action.
"In Nature's Arms" takes the structure of an ekphrastic sonnet. Drawing inspiration from Wordsworth's "I Wandered Lonely As a Cloud", I sought to romanticise nature as a divine and serene force. Through divine imagery like "twin flames of divinity" describing the skies and bodies of water, nature is established as sacred. In tandem with the visual and olfactory imagery throughout the first two quatrains and final couplet, this fosters attachment between the reader and nature — a deliberate preemptive decision to make the violations in the following poems feel tragic.
"Pandemonium" retells the Great Potato Famine, depicting the repercussions of a profit-centred mindset that ignores sustainability. The combination of the anaphora of "Nature" in lines 7–10 alongside auditory elements borrowed from Hopkins' "The Windhover", most notably the usage of plosion in the line "Pandemonium perpetrated partakers of the presumably poison-less potato", builds and carries momentum. It also enunciates and serves as a point of release for the sense of spiralling chaos created through the vivid auditory imagery/cacophony shown in the lines "Chattering. Clamouring. Churning. Yearning." and the poem's fractured structure and visual composition. It lacks stable rhythm and consistent line length, with an initial hint of rhyme that gradually fades making for a more discordant reading experience.
Meanwhile, "Tears of Tar" directly criticises industrialisation. Alongside the aforementioned auditory elements from "The Windhover" throughout the third stanza, the poem draws influence from Okpik's "If Oil Is Drilled in Bristol Bay" through its social commentary. Humanity — dehumanised as "figures" — receives two warnings about environmental harm from nature, symbolised through begonias and rhododendrons appearing under miraculous circumstances. The entirety of the third stanza captures the persona's frustration regarding humanity's ignorance through purposeful isolated lineation before and after shifting into prose poetry that contains two dense, cascading clauses with no punctuation. This syntactic shift transforms the poem into a drawn out, raw, rant-like expression towards environmental neglect, allowing for a more evocative message of exasperation and resentment to resonate with the reader. The form of prose poetry also feels expansive and engulfing, emulating the nature of industrialism in and of itself.
Although "In Nature's Arms" establishes nature as sacred, it also depicts a dying man afforded a peaceful death within its embrace. Foreshadowing of an Earth that has been abused and discarded is present through doves — symbols of peace and purity — being depicted as "fleeing and fleeting", while the use of "cotes" instead of "flock" or "bevy" suggests captivity. This metaphor implies the encroaching pursuers, described as "darkness — black as depth", represent humanity. Despite recognising this impending threat, the persona dies serenely in nature's embrace, contrasting with the industrialised future in "Tears of Tar", where death looms as an agonising "oncoming storm of liquid pneumonias".
As a whole, my zine and poems "In Nature's Arms", "Pandemonium" and "Tears of Tar" seek to awaken readers to the harm caused by prioritising industrialisation and capitalism over environmental sustainability by preemptively forging a bond between the reader and the natural world.
