As summer comes to a close, I feel grateful for exploring marshes, seeing eagles and hummingbirds, and swimming in a warm Lake Michigan. But still, there have been violent storms, wildfires, and sand dune erosion that I’ve also experienced. Our climate is changing and nature is reacting, in ways large and small, in ways we can’t even see or explain. That’s why I’m so fascinated now with a particular form of writing that hopes to give words to what we otherwise might not be able to say.
“The science of climate change is unequivocal. Its negative social and financial consequences are clear, dire, and exponential.... And yet we have been unable to effect change at the necessary scale. We have failed, somehow, to humanize this issue.... A good poem reminds us of our shared humanity. A good poem will string words together like pearls and connect us, shock us out of our usual tropes. A good poem reminds us of everything we share and everything we put at risk.” —Treehouse Investments, in a Q&A about the Treehouse Climate Action Poem Prize
Climate change poetry, sometimes also called Ecopoetry, is a subgenre of Documentary Poetry. You’ll find verse on winds and rains, icebergs and volcanoes, roots and leaves, burrowing creatures and insects. And, if you are writing this kind of poetry yourself, you can submit it to the poetry prize competition, open now, above. We talk about this kind of poetry in the show we are re-airing this weekend, “Docupoetry,” It’s true verse, beautiful and terrifying, art born from a startling reality.
– Shannon