‘Room for Creatures’: Francis Harvey’s Bestiary

Abstract

The environmental poet Michael Longley has said that the best defence against damaging dogmatism is to describe the world in a meticulous way that inspires in readers reverence and wonder for nature. Longley’s contention that ‘a poet’s mind should be like Noah’s ark with lots of room for creatures’¹ implies the need for a deep appreciation of nature, sensitivity to the threats that it faces, and a moral obligation to care for animals concomitantly with ourselves, in the spirit in which Noah was instructed to. The poet Francis Harvey writes with a naturalist’s precision about a remarkable range of Donegal fauna, as well as an ecologist’s awareness that humans are themselves animals who likely pose threats to other animals and their habitats and have a responsibility to care for them. His poems about animals — whether domestic or wild — are poignant reminders that our human responsibility is not to manipulate and control nature; rather, we are nature, and we are obligated to view our relationship to nonhuman nature holistically, recognizing the fundamental interconnectedness of humans and other animals.