environment

Lila Zemborain and Rosa Alcalá present their work as part of the Poetry Center's Fall 2009 sequence of themed readings, "Oh Earth, Wait for Me: Conversations about Art and Ecology." In the first half of the reading, Zemborain reads poems in Spanish and Alcalá reads their translations in English. Next, Alcalá reads her own poems. The performance closes with a poem read simultaneously in English and Spanish.

John D'Agata reads from his book About a Mountain (2010).

Denise Levertov reads from her collection Evening Train (1992), mixing in several poems from A Door in the Hive (1989). She also reads poems that would later appear in Sands of the Well (1996). Longing—for the past, for human connection, for an end to atrocities committed by the United States military—plays a prominent role in the poems Levertov reads.

Linda Hogan reads early drafts of poems that would later be collected in Rounding the Human Corners (2008), along with poems from The Book of Medicines (1993) and excerpts from her novel Solar Storms (1995). The reading concludes with questions from the audience.

Annick Smith reads the title essay from her first collection, Homestead (1995), as well as essays from her collection Big Bluestem: A Journey into the Tallgrass (1996), an exploration of the history of the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve in Oklahoma. She also reads "Sink or Swim," her contribution to a multi-author collection, Headwaters (1996), assembled in protest of industrial mining along the Blackfoot River. She concludes with "Writing Down the River," an essay on the Grand Canyon.

Brenda Hillman reads from her books Bright Existence (1993), Practical Water (2009), and Seasonal Works With Letters On Fire (2013), along with uncollected and new poems. 

Essayist and poet Erik Reece reads poems from A Short History of the Present (2009) and essays from An American Gospel: On Family, History, and the Kingdom of God (2009) as well as Utopia Drive: A Road Trip Through America's Most Radical Idea (2016).

Poet David Baker gives a collaborative performance alongside Lauren Baba, Andrew Rowan, Alina Roitstein, Harrison Kirk, and Gregory Uhlmann of the River Song Quintet, who perform musical settings of his poems. Included in this performance are uncollected and new poems, as well as poems from Baker's collections The Truth about Small Towns (1998) and Scavenger Loop (2015).

As part of the Terrain.org 25th Anniversary reading, Allison Adelle Hedge Coke reads from her book-length poem Look at This Blue (2022), focusing on extinctions and climate change in California, as well as on poverty and violence. This reading was originally given alongside Julie Swarstad Johnson and Derek Sheffield.

As part of the Terrain.org 25th Anniversary reading, Derek Sheffield reads poems via Zoom on the connection between humans and the natural world, drawn from his collections Through the Second Skin (2013) and Not For Luck (2021). He also discusses and reads from two anthologies he co-edited, Cascadia Field Guide: Art, Ecology, Poetry (2023) and Dear America: Letters of Hope, Habitat, Defiance, and Democracy (2020). This reading was originally given alongside Julie Swarstad Johnson and Allison Adelle Hedge Coke.

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.