Climate Poem at “Writing Out Of Time” blog
Thanks to Joseph Harrington, who featured a poem of mine in his Writing Out Of Time creative writing & climate chaos blog.
Climate Geopoetics article in Dialogues in Human Geography
The “online first” version of a new article, “Climate geopoetics (the earth is a composted poem)” is published in Dialogues in Human Geography. See the abstract and article here.
A poem in Carbon Copy: a new journal of climate science and the literary arts
The new journal Carbon Copy bills itself as “a journal at the intersection of climate science and the literary arts.” I’m grateful to have a poem in its inaugural issue. The poem is titled “In the Anthropocene, there can be no climate in the old sense; only weathercultures, with people acting as weatherculturalists.” The poem’s title is a direct quote from Mike Hulme, from his book Weathered: Cultures of Climate.
You can find the journal’s homepage here, and the poem here.
Applying the Geohumanities
My article “Applying the Geohumanities” has been published in the International Journal of Applied Geospatial Research. The article is part of a special issue on applied geography in academia, edited by my NMSU colleague Micheal DeMers.
Here is the abstract:
In recent years, geography has taken up a renewed engagement with humanities approaches to place, space, and environment. These approaches offer new possibilities for relevant, publicly engaged research and teaching; applying the geohumanities expands the techniques that geographers can employ to do engaged work in the face of great social and environmental challenges. This article describes two examples of applied geohumanities projects: a community course on climate change and poetry and a creative approach to a citizen science bioblitz. Building on these examples, four questions for future work in applied geohumanities are posed.
New article in Literary Geographies
My article ‘Healing, Belonging, Resistance, and Mutual Care’: Reading Indigenous Ecopoetics and Climate Narratives has been published in the new issue of the online open-access journal Literary Geographies. View the pdf here.
Here is the article’s abstract:
Narratives of climate change place it alternately as an environmental justice issue, a national and global security issue, an apocalyptic threat to life on earth, an opportunity for social change, and more. In this article, I aim to bring critical geographic work on climate narratives into conversation with contemporary poetry, through close readings of specific poems. I argue that the work of contemporary poets, and in particular the work of Indigenous ecopoetics, is rich in poetic texts that offer imaginative practices for recalibrating climate change narratives. I look particularly to works by Craig Santos Perez, Kathy Jetn̄il-Kijiner, Allison Adelle Hedge Coke, Joy Harjo, and Linda Hogan. I approach the poems as both a critical geographer and as a poet, thinking through and with their form and content in relation to climate narratives, and in relation to a description of Indigenous ecopoetics by Perez. I meet these poems as stored energy, as actors themselves in a human and more-than-human collective. A close reading of the craft of creative texts—particularly to the level of the line in poetry—highlights the inextricable connection between form and content in how a poem acts and means in the world. As a non-Indigenous reader of texts by Indigenous poets, my goal is not to perform a ‘master’ reading or analysis of these texts, but rather to learn from the poems and in doing so attempt to decolonize my own thought, a process that is a constant practice.
Residency at Playa
I’m thrilled to be at a residency at Playa in Oregon’s “outback” this early July, taking part in a themed art-sci climate residency on the edge of Summer Lake and the Great Basin. This is an amazing place to unplug, get some writing done, and connect with other artists and scientists. While here, I’m working on a new series of climate poems. Stay tuned.
Climate Change Interview
Leading into the University of Arizona Poetry Center’s series on Climate Change & Poetry, I was interviewed about climate change. Read the interview here.
Poetry and Climate Change at Hotel Congress: Wednesday, July 20, 2016
At the Copper Room of Tucson’s Hotel Congress on Wednesday, July 20, 2016, 5:30pm to 7:00pm
Climate Change & Poetry Course at the Poetry Center
See a blog post about my upcoming community course “Climate Change & Poetry” at the Climate Assessment for the Southwest (CLIMAS) webpage here.
from the post:
There is not one climate change; rather, there are many climate changes. This refers to both the physical science—the awareness that different regions will see different effects—as well as to the social perception of climate change. Alternate frames place it, for example, as an environmental justice issue, a national and global security issue, or an opportunity for social change. As recent provocative books and no less than the Pope have pointed out, climate change calls capitalism itself into question.