Field Guide to Invasive Species of Minnesota by Amelia Gorman

This is not a far-distant future, but one in which readers could very well be alive and experience. What makes it more chilling is the cautionary aspect of this book. Amelia Gorman takes very innocuous, even deceptively helpful, species that are, by definition, invasive and turns their natural conquest into a near-future, preapocalyptic nightmare. Overall, this is an eerie collection, especially upon rereading. for its shade and adaptability has taken over the habitat of the native red maple and created a monoculture so thorough that it’s possible to tap the trees for sap and create a syrup from them. This is a horrific reality in which a species that was transplanted to the U.S. For example, in in “Norway Maple,” she writes This kind of intelligence and research combined with a speculative slant makes for really strong, and terrifying, poetry.Įlsewhere, it seems that Gorman is speaking to someone else, and the invasive species of the poem is simply an accessory to the near-future pre-apocalypse. Here, earthworms are multiplying and consuming and replacing buildings and statues with a writhing, wriggling horde. They consume the duff layer in hardwood forests, reducing the amount of compostable material for the native plants and trees. One example of this is “Earthworms.” Earthworms are usually seen as friends to gardeners and fishermen alike, but the University of Minnesota argues that they are, indeed, invasive species and that there are no native earthworms in Minnesota. What makes this book interesting is how some species that are so common, and occasionally encouraged, are seen as invasive. If the world is not post-apocalyptic, or even apocalyptic, it’s certainly leaning that way, and nature is beginning to rear her powerful head and reclaim what’s rightfully hers, and Gorman is there to record all the awful details. However, reading the author’s notes, it becomes clear the book and its poems are set in the near-future.

It reads, on the surface, like a book of nature poems, possibly odes to or personifications of the titular invasive species. Interstellar Flight Press (September 6, 2021)Īt first glance, Field Guide to Invasive Species of Minnesota is not a book of horror poetry, or speculative poetry at all. Field Guide to Invasive Species of Minnesota: Poems by Amelia Gorman

Field Guide to Invasive Species of Minnesota by Amelia Gorman