Steven Duong
Grinnell College
Project
Freshwater Fish and the Poetry of Containment
Malawi, China, Thailand, Trinidad and Tobago
The impossible mission of the aquarist is to display the natural world in all its beauty and complexity within the confines of a glass box, without pretending that this box is the world itself. The poet's mission is similar, and just as impossible. As both poet and aquarist, I will spend this year seeking out fish breeders, evolutionary biologists and aquarium hobbyists, even fish fighters. By forming relationships with the people I meet and using my poetry as a tool for observation and understanding, I will immerse in human stories of movement, identity, belonging, and of course, fish, finding common ground in all these stories, as I build poems to house my own.