climate change

Aracelis Girmay discusses intersections between ways of thinking about poetry, ecologies, and climate change. She also reads from the black maria (2016) and Kingdom Animalia (2011). This reading was given as part of the Climate Change & Poetry Series.

Robert Hass reads one poem from The Apple Trees at Olema (2010) along with recent, uncollected poems on the subject of climate change. This reading was originally given with Brenda Hillman as part of the Climate Change & Poetry Series.

Brenda Hillman reads poems related to climate change from Cascadia (2001), Practical Water (2009), and Seasonal Works with Letters on Fire (2013). She also reads a new sequence of poems titled "The Rosewood Clauses." This reading was originally given with Robert Hass as part of the Climate Change & Poetry Series.

Camille Dungy discusses climate change and reads from What to Eat, What to Drink, What to Leave for Poison (2006), Smith Blue (2011), and a forthcoming manuscript titled Trophic Cascade. This reading was given as part of the Climate Change & Poetry Series.

Joy Harjo reads from Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings (2015) and How We Became Human: New and Selected Poems (2002). She also plays flute and soprano saxophone. This reading was given as part of the Climate Change & Poetry Series.

Ross Gay reads poems from Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude (2015) and an essay from The Book of Delights (2019). This reading was given as part of the Climate Change & Poetry Series.

Brian Teare reads new and uncollected work and discusses ecopoetics, ecofeminism, and climate change. This reading was given as part of the Climate Change & Poetry Series.

Alison Hawthorne Deming discusses the Climate Change & Poetry Series. She also reads from Stairway to Heaven (2016) and from uncollected work. This reading was given as part of the Climate Change & Poetry Series.

Jenny Offill reads from Dept. of Speculation (2014) as well as from a novel in progress, American Weather. This reading was originally given with Lydia Millet.

Jorie Graham reads from her poetry collection Fast (2017).

Nicole Walker reads from her essay collection Sustainability: A Love Story (2018).

Natalie Shapero reads poems from Hard Child (2017) along with other uncollected poems.

Anthony Cody reads from his collection Borderland Apocrypha (2020), which comprises of visual, research-based poems centered on citizenship, the history of racial violence against Mexicans and Mexican Americans in the American West, and ecopoetics. Cody also shares an original video piece paired with an uncollected poem, as well as a translation of a Juan Felipe Herrera poem that invites audience participation. This reading was originally given alongside Mai Der Vang. 

Lorna Dee Cervantes reads from her unpublished manuscript titled Fire: Poems Against Pandemic, as well as from her latest published collection, April on Olympia (2021). In these poems, Cervantes touches upon grief, connectedness with the earth, and climate change. She also pays poetic tribute to a range of figures that include her grandmother, a homeroom teacher from junior high, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and the writers Julia Alvarez and Allen Ginsberg.

torrin a. greathouse reads poems from two manuscripts in progress: DEED, focused on the intersections of desire, desirability, and violence, and a newer manuscript that turns to California's Central Valley and climate change. Discussions of poetic form recur throughout. greathouse was selected as the Poetry Center's 2020 Summer Resident; due to the Covid-19 pandemic, her residency was deferred, and this reading was presented online.

Jane Hirshfield reads from her ninth collection of poems, Ledger (2020), which meditates on the cascading effects of climate change and the griefs of contemporary human life. In recognition of National Poetry Month, she opens with "The Poet" from The Lives of the Heart (1997) and selections from The Ink Dark Moon (1988), her translations of Classical Period Japanese poets Ono no Komachi and Izumi Shikibu. She closes with uncollected new work.

Brenda Hillman reads from In a Few Minutes Before Later (2022), her eleventh collection of poetry, including poems set during the COVID-19 pandemic. She briefly discusses her translation—done in collaboration with her mother—of Brazilian poet Ana Cristina Cesar, and closes with two new poems focused on her mother's garden and her childhood home.

A selection of recordings focused on the environment and climate change. In the spirit of Earth Day, these poems catalog environmental destruction, lament losses in order to prompt change, and celebrate the natural world as well as the place of humans in it.