I have become a bit obsessed with bitterness and its many roles.  Tasting bitterness is tasting a warning signal, part of the body’s alarm system to not swallow poisons, but bitterness can also help to identify plant medicines and can enhance food or drink. Developing a bitter taste is a protective measure on the part of a plant, it’s a survival mechanism to deter animals from eating it and to communicate potential toxins. Plant-eaters have evolved with/ in response to plants to have significantly more bitter taste receptors than ones for sweet, salty, bitter, or umami, to differentiate poisonous plants from safe ones. 

The concept of bitterness, like the other tastes, has been consumed by some languages to also represent emotional, psychological, and physical states beyond simply describing a taste. For example: Embittered, bittersweet, bitter work, a bitter wind, bitter medicine are all using bitter to describe experiences and states beyond the taste.

I see flavour as an embodied experience that deepens our webs of connection and kinship: we share food around a table, guide toddlers away from tasting bitter shrub leaves, use flavour terminology in figures of speech and in sharing feelings, taste test/ snack in a garden, market, or grocery store, plan and prepare to tast things. But how does bitterness, specifically, connect us? 

It is important to root my exploration into bitterness relationally, because bitterness is a highly relational experience (see “Bitter Relations” for more). So, I have begun to facilitate verbal, visual, and written conversations on bitterness. First, I brought the theme of bitterness to my writing group. With seven of us sitting around Lucy’s living room eating soup, sharing snacks, and drinking a herbaceous bitter drink Abby made, we brought together three pieces of writing on bitterness. We read the pieces aloud to each other, discussed, and then did some writing exercises. Edie offered up a 1-minute sketching prompt where we rapidly drew symbols for different flavour word prompts. Once we were warmed up I gave the prompt “write about a bitter fruit” to the group. “On the Tongue” comes out of that writing session. Through our conversations, the idea of bitter as a boundary for humans and non-humans alike was central. We talked about destigmatizing bitterness, but then I wondered about how bitterness can keep its edge. The poem I wrote was an injection of bitter anger into the conversation and it got me thinking about if, in trying to dive deeper into bitterness, we might risk diluting the power of it.

Following this first adventure into sharing bitterness, I designed a collage-based workshop for the graduate seminar class titled Plants, Gardens & Critical Ecologies in Contemporary Art, taught by Aaron McIntosh. I brainstormed with Reb and decided that for this workshop I would take inspiration from Edie’s timed prompt method to access the knee-jerk responses of the participants (this approach was also more compatible with the time constraints of the workshop). In the workshop we gathered around two long tables pushed together in an open area near a wall of windows that overlooked the Visual Arts Building’s garden. I brought some bitter treats for participants to take ‘inspiration’ from and scattered magazines and printouts of the texts from my reading group. Once most participants had arrived, I gave a brief introduction and then we began the exercises. At the beginning there was an air of frenetic focus but half way through the workshop we began to talk more as a group about the associations participants were making. Some themes that stood out were: the pleasure and challenge of tasting bitter foods and drinks, bitterness as dangerous or as poison, chaperoning bitterness, the eros in bitterness, and bitter recipes.

What follows in this publication is a series of poetic explorations into bitterness through the collages that my colleagues generously shared with me, interwoven with my personal reflections on the themes that have emerged with many more questions than answers. My hope in writing and compiling this work is to move towards a better understanding what role bitterness can play in cultivating a delicious future.