Ecopoetry and Water
“Be wet with a decent happiness.”
Ashwini Bhat, “Lassen Peak Trail” (Assembling California), 2023.
This collection of poetry, curated by Forrest Gander, explores water’s presence and movement among humans and other living things. In his introduction, Gander writes,
What humans have perpetrated on their environment certainly affects the means and material of poets. But can poetry itself be ecological? Ecopoets attempt to offer insights, both formally and thematically, into the complex interrelationships between nature and culture, language and perception. This collection of ecopoetry focuses on water, which has been called the “source of all life.”
Ecopoetry and Water
Forrest Gander
The Rain
Robert Creeley
From within my bodily singularity
Julia Fiedorczuk
Lockdown Gardens: "Set with raindrops"
Arvind Krishna Mehrotra
Praise the Rain
Joy Harjo
Transformocean
Samuel Gregoire
Sound of Wave in Channel: 7.2
Stephen Ratcliffe
Sound of Wave in Channel: 7.21
Stephen Ratcliffe
Water’s Lubricious Edges
Coral Bracho
So here I stand
Inger Christensen
A Maritime Vocabulary
Zoë Skoulding
Breakers ["And then, rained down"]
Raúl Zurita
Deep Water Trawling
Jorie Graham
Praise Song for Oceania
Craig Santos Perez
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (text of 1834)
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
On the Fifth Day
Jane Hirshfield
A river slips
Cole Swensen
Stream Loggers
Karen Houle
From Dart: sewage worker ["It's a rush"]
Alice Oswald
River Pieces
Don Domanski
Watershed
Tracy K. Smith
The Negro Speaks of Rivers
Langston Hughes
Shallow Estuary
Stuart Cooke
Twentieth Amanita Ode
Peter O’Leary
Watershed and Shield Reminiscence
Liz Howard
The Covenant
Brenda Hillman
Disentangling a Gray Whale
Maya Khosla
Miracle Fish
Ada Limón
Kelp
Jeffrey Yang
The Shearline of Obscurity
C. D. Wright
- Art Works podcast, National Endowment for the Arts"Dungy discusses the issues around the absence of Black voices in anthologies of environmental poetry, editing and organizing Black Nature, her own work as a poet, and the significance of environmental poetry."
- Film by Justyn Ah Chong, poem by Craig Santos Perez
- Created by Queens CollegeAn interview with poet Kimiko Hahn about her ideas of ecopoetry and education.
- Kelly Writers House at the University of PennsylvaniaExcerpts from "The Future of Ecopoetics" event with Evelyn Reilly and Joshua Schuster at the Kelly Writers House.
- Poets.orgIn this video from Poets Forum 2013, Arthur Sze speaks on the topic: Contemporary Practices of Ecopoetics.
- Poets.orgIn this video from Poets Forum 2013, C. D. Wright speaks on the topic: Contemporary Practices of Ecopoetics.
- Video poem by Forrest GanderFilm adapted from "Immigrant Sea," a poem by Forrest Gander in "Twice Alive: an Ecology of Intimacies" (New Directions Publishers)
- Ian McKellen reads the 1798 version of Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" ("The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere").
- Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, California, June 21, 2013
- Audio hosted by Federico Federici
- Glossary term
- John Shoptaw
- Longleaf Review
- Plumwood Mountain JournalEditorial note about Plumwood Mountain Journal, an Australian and international journal of ecopoetry and ecopoetics.
- AVBOB online poetry project of South AfricaAn exploration of the precious, but threatened, natural resource of wetlands through the eyes of a poet.
- Special ecojustice-themed issue of "Poetry"