Meet Paul Brooke | Professor of English and Endowed Chair of Creative Writing

We had the good fortune of connecting with Paul Brooke and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Paul, the decisions we make often shape our story in profound ways. What was one of the most difficult decisions you’ve had to make?

Back in 2009, I was coming back from visiting friends with my wife when a minivan hit black ice and then rolled seven times. There was a family inside and the little girl was badly injured. I carried her through the snow and held her in my arms in our car as we waited for the ambulance. I tried to keep her awake as I knew with her head trauma that she might not wake up.

That next Monday I quit my job in administration to focus more on my art and writing career. What the accident did was show me that I was extremely unhappy and displeased with my work. I went back to teaching full time and suddenly my art and writing took off. In a five-year period following, I published three books and over a hundred poems.

I tried in vain to find out what happened to that little girl. But I was not related to her and then wouldn’t tell me. I imagine that she is alive today and living a good life and I hope that my actions led to her survival. She certainly led to mine!

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.

I am the author of six books, including Jaguars of the Northern Pantanal, The Skald and the Drukkin Trollaukin, and Arm Wrestling at the Iowa State Fair. Since I believe in cross-disciplinarity, I have forged a unique path as a scientist, photographer and writer. In 2020, I published (with my co-author Paul Donahue) a definitive work on a particular subpopulation of jaguars. My work as a photographer has led me to travel all over the world. Last year, I finished a monumental book project on pumas in Chile as I photographed them in Torres del Paine NP, a project that fuses wildlife photography, form poetry and scanning electron microscope work.

Art, for me, is a confluence of disciplines, everything merges and interconnects; therefore, I must be open to all sorts of possibilities. I experiment constantly with new techniques in photography and new forms in poetry, while integrating scientific knowledge. This makes the work dynamic and relevant.

What I learned 20 years ago is this: focus on your own vision. Stay to that. Never waiver. Always reinvent that vision every few years when it becomes comfortable. Art is about recasting one’s self. Pushing past the expected.

My brand celebrates the natural world, seeks to find ways in which we can coexist with predators and pushes for change in a hostile environment.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
I would take them away to a place like Yellowstone or Rocky Mountain NP or Ding Darling National Wildlife Refuge or Madera Canyon in Arizona. Then, we would track wildlife and have daily adventures tracking wolves or moose or roseate spoonbills or elegant trogons. To me, the wilderness centers me and gives me jouissance (pure joy). Perhaps afterwards, we would return to the Botanical Gardens or a local missionary to photograph sunsets.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?

Yes, Don Libey deserves so much credit. He recognized my potential and published my first two books. Had he not done that, I am not sure my career would have flourished like it did. I remember meeting with him at an art gallery and he asked if I would be willing to trust my work with him.

He was a very savvy business person and he owned his own publishing business. I am thankful for his generosity but also he showed me that I could merge art and writing together in harmonious ways. This cross-disciplinary focus has been transformation in my life.

Website: https://paul-brooke.com/

Instagram: @hawkensbrooke

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-brooke-9269a3a/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/paul.brooke.71/

Image Credits
All of these are my original photographs.