In Requisite, Tanya Holtland confronts our collective complacency towards climate change and ecological collapse. Her poems advocate for a collective approach to healing, enacted by a truly communal we that runs through the book. Holtland’s well-crafted preface is the lynchpin for comprehending the manuscript. She writes, “I remember that in order to change I must move circularly, open to the season of everything. Open to what asks for true seeing to take place, for evolution to move through and by you, into the future.”

Requisite draws much of its urgency from Spiritual Ecology, a collection of essays edited by Llewellyn Vaughn-Lee “that speaks of our enduring relationship to the earth in parallel to our unprecedented dilemma of ecological collapse” (from Holtland’s preface). Requsisite’s first long poem was originally written (and performed) as a libretto text.  The libretto is a text written as part of a larger conversation among singers, orchestra, and audience. Likewise, Holtland’s poems are the text to a larger conversation underscoring the importance of the collective in combating more than climate change. Requisite attempts to unify us during this time of ecological crisis; we and the earth need spiritual healing. She writes about the earth as though it is “someone I am in a relationship with” (from the preface) and this careful consideration infuses her poems, whose endings consistently pivot with acute emotion, as seen in section two of “Fated”: “Maybe the consistency of our humanness is largely the sharing // of what we cannot see.”

Holtland’s flexibility with language creates a playful and pensive space on the page, as the collective speaker puzzles through what it means to be human in this particular time. The poems in Requisite ask questions and write into a place of unknowing, seeking to unify the masses of self with the natural world. The inventive language is often astonishing, as in section seven of the long poem “Fated”: “hold to the heart of the matter— // we may love / each other / and the oceans / may go on forever and a wave / is still a thing that runs out.”

What does it mean to “run out”? The wave runs out into the ocean, and we run out of time to save the ocean that houses the wave. It is through this intricate figurative language that Holtland reaches out to the reader, offering partnership. Her use of white space is in keeping with much eco poetry. At their most effective, these caesuras allow the words to fully breathe on the page; this act of breathing is the medicine that the poet hopes these poems will provide for earth and reader alike. But at times, the white space on the page helps distract us by breaking up the imagery. The work is most captivating when the reader is able to revel in the surprising language Holtland delivers. From section two of “Fated”: “On the water / we float global fever. // Coast the / slow of un / -doing.”

Requisite reminds us of our place on earth and encourages us to linger on the wind rushing through leaves, water coursing down its banks. These poems ask for your attention and your companionship. We are invited into a world rich with life, water teaming with vibrancy, mountains vibrating with growth. As Holtland writes in “The Story,” “We are the story we watch // when we feel / anything at all / about an ocean, a continent, / a woman, a toddler.”  

With these poems, we are reminded that the earth’s story is also our story, that from the smallest squirming creature to the deepest ocean, we are in this together. 

May 2020