A prose-poem turned into a sky shanty and performed by Patrice Fitzgerald and Richard Leslie.
Rewilding Indiana started as a prose poem/microfiction published by Little Blue Marble. From the beginning, this tiny story had big ideas, and I immediately started writing a sky shanty (to the tune of Wellerman) to accompany it… and stalled out, not sure what the story (or song’s) fate would be. Once I decided to reprint Rewilding Indiana in my solarpunk short story collection, Halfway to Better, the sky shanty shoved its way to the front of my brain again and demanded to be finished. I’m fortunate to have many talented friends, including Patrice Fitzgerald and Richard Leslie (writers and editors as well as singers), and with their help and copious notes, the sky shanty became something you could actually sing.
From there, it was a rush of filming and performing and editing to finally pull together the video/song/performance.
Rewilding Indiana: Sky Shanty, by Susan Kaye Quinn, based on her #solarpunk prose-poem, Rewilding Indiana. Performed by Patrice Fitzgerald and Richard Leslie. Editing/Video by Susan Kaye Quinn.
(Sung to the tune of the sea shanty, Wellerman, as made famous by Nathan Evans)
Rewilding Indiana is a prose-poem about Joanna, a seedcropper who rewilds the land by spraying native seeds from the air. Sea shanties come from a long tradition of call-and-response work songs. This sky shanty is envisioned as a work song for the wilders as they pull invasive species from the forest and sing tales about Joanna raining seeds from the sky.