Pages: Cocaine Hippos Project (and my part in it): posts and updates

Wednesday, September 06, 2023

Cocaine Hippos Project (and my part in it): posts and updates

In April this year I was asked by Rupert Loydell to contribute to a gathering of poems about the ‘Cocaine Hippos’ of Colombia, and to help the invitees, he sent this wonderful link:

https://theconversation.com/pablo-escobars-cocaine-hippos-are-a-problem-but-a-lot-of-thought-is-going-into-preventing-their-spread-203603

I had already read about these beasts, bobbing along at the top of their human-directed food-chain, escaped from Pablo Escobar’s private zoo. I’m sorry that they are a ‘problem’, but I caught a feature about them on TV and rather delighted in their health, profusion and general invasion of the jungle. Of course, they are an ecological aberration, acknowledged in the title of the poem I wrote, ‘A Kink in the Anthropocene’, but not in the substance of it, for it reminds me of poems by Edwin Morgan (Patricia of Bill Griffiths) so it’s in no way a typical poem by me! (Good!) I speak in the voice of a hippo. (See links below.)

I thought it only fair (and interesting) to link to the whole project as it appears, every few days, on Stride:

Sept 7 #1: Thirteen Ways of Writing About a Hippo: Eric Eric Cocaine Hippos 1: Thirteen Ways of Writing About a Hippo | Stride magazine

Sept 9 #2: dead on the road: Geoff Sutton: Cocaine Hippos 2: dead on the road to Colombia | Stride magazine

Sept 11 #3: Wildlife Sanctuary: Rupert Loydell (our editor): Cocaine Hippos 3: Wildlife Sanctuary | Stride magazine

Sept 13 #4: Dead or Alive: Mélisande Fitzsimons: Cocaine Hippos 4: Dead or Alive | Stride magazine

Sept 15: #5: Hippos on Cocaine (visual poems): Mike Ferguson: Cocaine Hippos 5: Hippos on Cocaine | Stride magazine

Sept 17 #6: poem #02-12-1993: Blossom Hibbert: Cocaine Hippos 6: poem #02-12-1993 | Stride magazine

Sept 19 #7: The Paradox Engine / Sober Noises of Morning: Andrew Darlington: Cocaine Hippos 7: The Paradox Engine/Sober Noises of Morning | Stride magazine

Sept 21 #8: boy says nothing: Charlie Baylis: Cocaine Hippos 8: boy says nothing | Stride magazine

Sept 23 #9: Magdalena: Andrew Taylor: Cocaine Hippos 9: Magdalena | Stride magazine

Sept 25: #10: Humans Into Animals: Rupert Loydell (our editor, again, and it's a good one): Cocaine Hippos 10: Humans Into Animals | Stride magazine

Sept 27 #11: ‘A Kink in the Anthropocene’; that’s my poem. And it’s the last in this anthology. Read it here: Cocaine Hippos 11: A Kink in the Anthropocene | Stride magazine . I hope you like it; I hope you like all of them.

Watch a clip from CBS News about them. (The ‘Rhino News’ in my poem is a hint at a rather different US ‘news’ network.)