The Interview : Tansy Troy

Rachna Singh, Editor, The Wise Owl talks to Tansy Troy, an India-based educationalist, poet, performer, playwright and maker of bird and animal masks. She conceived and edits The Apple Press, a young people's eco journal which features poetry, stories, articles and artwork. Troy’s latest books, With Earth as my Witness and Singing to the Eumenides invite  the reader to reflect on the life cycles and experiences of wanderers and monks, peaks and trees, snow leopards and jackals, woodpeckers and ravens, all creatures great and small.

Thank you, Tansy, for talking with The Wise Owl

RS: Your poetry in With Earth as My Witness beautifully intertwines ancient wisdom traditions with contemporary scientific awareness. How do these seemingly distinct worldviews converse in your creative process, and how do they shape your understanding of ecological responsibility?

TT: Thank you so much, Dr Rachna for inviting me to Wise Owl. 

My engagement with the ancient wisdom tradition of Tibetan Buddhism dates back to childhood, some of which was spent in Dharamsala while I was travelling with my Mother around India for many months and over the course of five years while she researched handloom textiles.  I used to think I felt most at home in the Himalayas because the climate reminded me of London (always raining), but in retrospect, I am pretty sure I was mainly attracted to the security of deeply chanted prayers in the monasteries.  Later, as I became more conversant with the actual precepts of Tibetan Buddhism, I realised that our most contemporary scientific understanding has so much in common with ancient wisdom, particularly with regard to quantum realities.  I also feel the practice of close observation – both of internal and external states of being- in meditative practice and modern science, correspond.  The more deeply we understand the details of interconnectedness, the more aware we become of our responsibility towards the sentient beings with whom we inhabit the earth, air and oceans.

RS: Animals—snow leopards, ravens, jackals—populate your poems not as symbols, but as sentient presences. What draws you to these creatures as poetic interlocutors, and what do they help you say about our shared vulnerability in a changing world?

TT: This is a wonderful question, since most recently, my poems have been practically all in ‘first animal’- a term which came into being on a Nature Writing Retreat with my dear mentor Ranjit Hoskote.  He had sent us all out into the fields and orchards of Utterakhand to document other species we encountered and as we were reading our notes later that afternoon, he picked up on some lines I’d transcribed in the voice of the Greenfinch.  ‘You should explore that voice,’ Ranjit advised and before I knew it, I had redrafted a whole series of ‘Postcards from a Betrayed Island’ in the voices of species from Great Nicobar.  I think the reason I need to become the voicebox- the poetic medium if you like- for many other species on the planet is twofold.  It is of course the moment to act as advocate or even oracle for so many birds, animals, marine life, since we are losing the rich biodiversity of our beautiful planet at such high speed.  And because of this terrible situation we find ourselves in, some brilliant scientists and exemplary legal practitioners are trying their best to really understand, possibly for the first time in our species history, what the more eloquent sound makers are saying.  If we can learn whalespeak in order to translate and interpret their concerns, then battles for their species can be fought- and hopefully won – in courts across the world.  On a more spiritual plane, I do actually believe that animals, insects, birds, are totem creatures with messages for us all, maybe not spoken, but possibly all the more poignant and important for that.  I like to listen to their guidance.

RS: The Apple Press, your eco-journal for young people, is a rare and inspiring initiative. What led you to create this platform, and how do you see poetry, storytelling, and visual art nurturing environmental consciousness in children today?

TT: Like so many other creative enterprises, The Apple Press seed was planted in lockdown.  Previously, my husband Tanzin Norbu and I had spent our summer holidays in Ladakh and his native Zanskar, telling musical stories with young people and any wandering minstrels we could persuade to climb the Himalayas with us.  In 2021, none of that could happen since the border between Himachal and Ladakh/Zanskar was completely impassable.  Fortuitously, we were locked down in Manali with a whole bunch of other like-minded kindred spirits– journalists, photographers, writers, chefs, illustrators and novelists.  Before we knew it, we had decided to make a journal amongst ourselves and have some local Zanskaris take copies over the border to the monasteries and schools we usually spent time in.  Dikshit Sharma, a photographer and designer, came on board to co-found and design the content, and everyone we knew contributed to that first issue- stories, collages, recipes and poems, activities, wordsearches, you name it.  We decided that a young people’s journal for our times needed to be sustainable and compostable, so we printed on recycled khadi paper and asked for members of the karigar community in Delhi to hand stitch it all together.  We also printed in offset, with sustainable inks.  Over the next couple of years, Apple Press actually did begin to fly off the press and by Issue III, we sold out in 24 hours and had to reprint immediately.  As a Creative Arts practitioner and educationalist, the only way I feel I can get any message at all across to the next generation is through poetry, song, stories, visual and performing arts because all young people speak the language of all of these things, effortlessly, if they are allowed to.

RS: Your journey spans the ambit of London’s Covent Garden and the Himalayas, Cambridge’s cloisters and Indian classrooms. How have these diverse landscapes and cultural encounters influenced your poetics, and your vision of Earth as a shared, sacred space?

TT: Hmm, I guess I’ve never really thought about living in different cultures as shaping my ‘vision’ of a shared Earth, though of course it has.  I had a lucky educational start in London, where my school was populated with students from all over the world, speaking an equal number of languages.  So multiculturalism was very much at the heart of how we were educated.  Coming to India as a pre-teen was daunting and sometimes something of a culture shock, but when I returned as an adult, I felt more at home here that I did in the far-too-rapidly ‘developing’ city of my birth, London.  After a beautiful wild summer in Ladakh, I wrote my first Himalayan poems for my not-yet husband, Tanzin.  That winter, he went on a trek with a friend along the frozen Chadar River for a few weeks.   I had emailed him a poem which ended: I make hay in the land of your birth/While you make eyes at mine.  For some reason, he couldn’t get the lines out of his head and said that no matter how cold, how hungry they were on that trek, all he could repeat to himself was those words!  So poetry connected us and continues to connect me to many other poets and environmentalists, both in India and around the world.  It’s an evolving discourse, fluid, fast-changing, yet constant because heartfelt.

RS: As a performer and mask-maker, you bring to life birds and beasts through theatre and storytelling. What unique truths emerge through embodied performance that poetry on the page may not fully capture?

TT:  This is a great point because all the eco theatre we’ve been performing in India and other countries over the years is actually spoken-word poetry and song.  Theatre is a form I have in my bones- my father was an actor, my grandparents both in the film trade- and although I didn’t grow up with my Dad, I grew up in his realm.  Covent Garden when I was a child was a magical place of ballet shoemakers and costume dry cleaners and theatres, theatres, theatres.  I was taken to the ballet, constantly, because the Colosseum was just around the corner and you could slip in for a couple of pounds and stand at the back of the stalls to see Nureyev and Frederick Ashton and a host of other geniuses dance.  Seeing humans transformed into dancing fauns and the characters from Beatrix Potter, to spirits of roses and vegetables from Covent Garden market made a deep and lasting impression on me.  The house I grew up in was opposite a mask and prop shop called ‘Theatre Zoo’ and my Primary school had a props cupboard full of giant animals masks.  So I guess I grew up with the very deep seated belief than when wearing a mask on a stage, a human being could actually transform into someone from another species (which they can, by the way!).  My daughter and I toured a story about a speaking crow, The Adventures of Tara, around India over about three years to festivals and galleries, schools and theatres and one unique truth that definitely emerged was that with a good tune, a good beat and a good cause, you could get an entire audience not only out of their seats but actually onto the stage with us.  That felt very positive.

RS: Your poems have been described as “psalms for the suffering of beasts of burden” and a “radical rebooting of the planet.”* In times of climate grief and ecological collapse, how do you stay rooted in hope, and what role can the artist play in envisioning planetary renewal?

TT: I remember once when I was showing some very early work about a forest to an illustrator in London, saying:  I’m finding it really hard to paint and write without breaking down in tears every day.  He looked at me wisely and smiled.  Ah yes.  Divine grief, he nodded.  So somehow, that gave me a kind of courage, a courage to feel ok about breaking down and expressing the helplessness and sorrow and anxiety about so many beautiful others.  I still break down when I read harrowing stuff.  The March issue of Frontline’s Great Nicobar story had me weeping so hard I couldn’t stop.  And Robert Macfarlane’s tale of the turtle patrol walk along the beaches of Chennai in Is A River Alive? caused more damned up emotion to break its banks.  But now, I act upon those tears and that grief to write or paint in response.  In fact, creating has become a kind of resistance to grief.  I recently had the uncanny experience of painting an Olive Ridley’s turtle to illustrate a friend’s poem and as the painting progressed, it felt like bringing a ghost turtle back to life again.

RS: Your work blurs boundaries—between human and non-human, nature and culture, the personal and the planetary. Is this fluidity a poetic strategy or a philosophical stance—and how can language help us reimagine our place in the web of life?

TT: I have been told that I’m not very good at boundaries!  Actually, I think all artists necessarily have to be, else we’d never get any work done.  But when I encounter what I feel to be unnecessary ones- say between human beings of different socio-economic backgrounds, or between humans and non-human species, then I try my damndest to break them down.  This is my personal practice of pushing limits and therefore breaking free of limitations.  Or perhaps discovering the limitations were only ever linguistic constructs, after all.  Definitely I don’t think I have a strategy –friends will verify that I am probably one of the least strategic people on the planet- but I do really love the idea that language could be reshape and re-imagined to help us find a way through.  As I mentioned earlier in the interview, I find it very exciting indeed to think that soon, we may be able to whalespeak, learn blackbird, converse in langur, dream in elephant rumble.  There are talented and sensitive individuals out there already doing this.  It’s just a question of the rest of us catching up at Multispecies School.

RS: Having worked so closely with young people through schools, workshops, and The Apple Press, what have children taught you—about imagination, about grief, and about the earth—that adults often forget?

TT: The young people with whom I have the great privilege to work and play teach me so much.  They mend my heart when I haven’t even realised that it’s hurting, they open my ears and eyes to ways of seeing and understanding difference.  I have learned some of my deepest philosophical wisdom from two years olds and better understand how the planet can be healed through conversations with young people driven by ideals and compassion rather than material concerns.  What do we forget as adults?  We often forget the joy.  The fun.  The hilarity.  We forget to build community because we are so involved with our own self-obsessions.  We forget to notice the fleeting details because we are blinded by the glamour of screens.   As we struggle with our inner worries and woes, our dark hour of the soul, young people are constantly reminding us to stay light, to keep creating, to resist dogma and to be subversive when necessary – which, by the way, seems to be most of the time these days.   Most of all, I love how when motivated, they are so highly energised and energetic.  Almost transcendently so!

Thank you so much Tansy for talking with The Wise Owl. We wish you the very best in all your creative and ecological endeavours.

It’s been a huge pleasure.  Thank you for this wonderful invitation to converse.