Review: Kindling by Linnea Ryshke

By way of introducing Kindling, an unforgettable collection of poetry and art by Linnea Ryshke, I can say that it belongs to a group of books that have changed me. The book is an account of Ryshke's work as a labourer at a small organic meat farm in Northern Europe in the summer of 2019 and the poetry, art and photographs that emerged from that experience. Aside from the compelling story Ryshke has to tell—the heartbreaking life of farm animals purposed for human consumption—the extraordinary impact of this book is how she sees and relates to the animals she encounters there, the language of her touch.

Ryshke allows the reader to witness conditions that we would otherwise prefer not to imagine—let alone psychically and physically inhabit—by presenting them through the sensitive, unflinching, sensory-rich nature of her art. From the beginning, it's as if she knows to dim the lights so we slowly adjust to the response these images will evoke out of respect for the animals (whom Ryshke calls nonhumans) and for us, knowing that if we are sentient, what we are about to see, hear and feel will be difficult. This book is about suffering—theirs, and, collectively, ours. Nevertheless, Ryshke's gift lies in her ability to enter the animals’ experiences and aliveness imaginatively and empathically, while deeply examining her relationship to them as a matrix for our own.

The book carries the feeling of an elegy from the first encounter with the book cover. We meet an exquisitely drawn charcoal image of a bird with closed eyes, head down, her wings enfolded. Then the title: KIN/DLING. The division of this word offers a collective mirror of our profound split from the brutal marginalization of farm animals and is the essence of Ryshke's challenge to us: Can we dream of and work together toward a world where we see animals as “Kin”, rather than “Kindling?” Knowing that we collectively dissociate from the horrors animals endure in their brief days on the earth in factory farms—even on