T137.
Socializing the Nature Poem: The Nonhuman World & Identity
Thursday, March 24, 2022
10:35 am to 11:50 am
As Audre Lorde said, “Our visions are essential to create that which has never been, and we must each learn to use all of who we are to achieve those visions.” The “nature poem” was never just about nature. When we look at anything, we put ourselves into that gaze. Five poets of diverse backgrounds share poems that engage with the more-than-human world in ways that are accurate, ethical, nuanced, and surprising, connecting gender, race, geography, sexuality, and culture.
Participants
Derek Sheffield's collection, Not for Luck, was selected by Mark Doty for the Wheelbarrow Books Poetry Prize. He is the poetry editor of Terrain.org and a coeditor of Dear America: Letters of Hope, Habitat, Defiance, and Democracy and Cascadia: A Field Guide through Art, Ecology, and Poetry.
Chaun Ballard’s chapbook, Flight, was the winner of the 2018 Sunken Garden Poetry Prize. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Narrative Magazine, Rattle, the New York Times, Terrain.org, Tupelo Quarterly, and other literary magazines.
Michael Wasson, author of Swallowed Light, is a 2019 Ruth Lilly Poetry Fellow and a 2018 NACF National Artist Fellow in Literature. He is nimíipuu from the Nez Perce Reservation in Idaho.
Elizabeth (Betsy) Aoki is a videogame producer and National Poetry Series finalist. Her awards include: Artist Trust, City of Seattle, Hedgebrook, Clarion West Writers Workshop (speculative fiction). Her first book of poems about technology, Breakpoint, is forthcoming in 2022.
Brian Teare is the author of six critically acclaimed books of poetry, most recently The Empty Form Goes All the Way to Heaven and Doomstead Days. An associate professor at the University of Virginia, he makes books by hand for his micropress, Albion Books.
