Storytelling in a Climate Crisis

Storytelling in a Climate Crisis

Storytelling in a Climate Crisis poster.
Storytelling in a Climate Crisis

On September 14 at 6pm, Lauren Kuby will be at the Changing Hands Bookstore in Phoenix to exchange poetry and stories about the environment and environmental crisis. Please note that performer signups are limited, and these signups close September 7.

The Changing Hands Bookstore is unique to Arizona and offers new and used books. They often host author events.

Lauren Kuby is a sustainability scientist at Arizona State University and a recognized national champion for climate action and clean energy.

Register here to join!

A photo of the poet David Baker.

David Baker’s Whale Fall


David Baker’s new book Whale Fall, published by W. W. Norton & Company, is a poetry collection that operates on both a macro and micro level. As Baker’s poetry delves into global ecosystems, it also delves into his personal life. His masterful ability to blend these themes is apparent even early on in the book. His poem “Mullein,” the second in the collection, relates the scientific names of plants to the intimate nicknames Baker’s father gave to friends and family.

Whale Fall is filled with scientific terminology. In fact, the title itself is the name of a particular phenomenon. As Baker explains in his interview with Renee Shea in World Literature Today, a whale fall is an “oceanographic term that describes three stages of [a whale’s] death and decay.” It can take years for the whale carcass to settle on the ocean floor, and its body can provide nutrients to other organisms for decades.

Baker’s poetry is known for its sense of place and environmental message, and Whale Fall follows this trend. For those looking for beautiful nature imagery grounded in environmentalism and threaded with a personal narrative, Whale Fall is the perfect poetry collection.

A virtuoso of eco-poetry and acoustics, Baker meditates on the nonpareil majesty of the planet with rigorous consideration and reverence… Baker’s careful, captivating writing sinks under the skin, summoning a long-forgotten need for stillness, wonder, and attention to the sacrosanctity of the world.

publishers weekly

David Baker has written nineteen books, thirteen of them poetry collections. His work has been published in American Poetry Review, Antaeus, The Atlantic Monthly, and elsewhere. To learn more about Baker, visit his website.

From the shadow of the garfish to the memory of seabed in Ohio sandstone, nothing appears to be too slight or too immense for David Baker’s powers of lyric transformation. In book after eloquent book, his artistry has become more purely his own: pared down to essentials while refining its scope of generous inclusion. Baker’s method, like his subject, is the fine pulse of human encounter: here in its most distillate manifestation.

Linda Gregerson, author of prodigal: new and selected poems and magnetic north

You can purchase Whale Fall through Amazon or Barnes & Noble.

Baker’s poems “Never-Ending Birds” and “The Truth About Small Towns” appeared in Issue 3 of Superstition Review. To read them, go here.

Contributor Update, Rebecca Durham

Join Superstition Review in congratulating past contributor Rebecca Durham on the release of her debut poetry collection Half-Life of Empathy. Rebecca is a poet, botanist, and artist. She has earned an M.S. in botany, an M.F.A. in Creative Writing (Poetry), and is currently working towards a Doctorate in Interdisciplinary Studies. For the last nine years, she has been researching vascular plants and lichens at the MPG Ranch, a conservation research property. Half-Life of Empathy jumps off of Rebecca’s knowledge of ecology and centers around human relationships with nature in an ever-increasingly industrialized society. In an interesting twist on nature poetry, Rebecca moves away from a human-centered view of nature and describes nature as it exists and an Earth that has regained control of itself. Half-Life of Empathy is currently available for purchase through Small Press Distribution and on Amazon.

“What a beautiful use of the words of water and geology and all things living. Durham writes a new ecological poetry, resonant, rich, and also very aware of what it means to be writing when this never-ending industrial revolution is putting all at risk.” – Juliana Spahr

Find out more about Rebecca at her website and be sure to check out her work featured in Issue 17.

#ArtLitPhx: Cross-Pollination: Poetry and Science Sustaining Our World

Date: Saturday, May 11, 2019

Time: 1:30pm – 3:30pm

Location:

Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research
1215 E Lowell St, Tucson, AZ 85721

Cost: Free

Event Details:

Under the title of cross-pollination: poetry and science sustaining our world, we will host a series of 3 discussions of eco-poetry, a collaboration of the UA Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research and the UA Poetry Center and led by docents from each facility.

Discussions will be held in the Bryant Bannister Building, 1215 E Lowell Street on the following Saturdays: March 9, April 13, and May 11 from 1:30-3:00 pm. Participants will receive a different packet of poems prepared by the docents for each date. No previous experience with poetry is necessary.