Special Interest: Environment panels @ Split This Rock 2014

To help you plan your festival schedule, we broke down panels, workshops, and group readings by special interest. Check out those dealing with the environment below!

 

Environment

    Thursday 3/27:

                   2-3:30pm – Wilderness Society Conference Room

              Rethinking the City: Poetic Strategies for Renewing Urban Space

Jennifer Karmin, Claudia La Rocco, Pireeni Sundaralingam

Urban lives are designed and controlled as never before. This round-table brings together a diverse range of poets from different schools of poetry whose work is united in challenging the homogeneity of cities, and whose work and practices create new ways to visualize and interact with the landscapes in which we live. The round-table will provide a much-needed platform through which to compare the artistic interventions being used in different cities, and to examine how individual citizen-artists can play a role in reshaping urban environments through their art.

                   4-5:30pm – Wilderness Society Conference Room

The Environment in Crisis: Poetry & Activism

Ann Waldman, Ross Gay, Wang Ping, Melissa Tuckey

We recently passed 400 parts per million of Co2 in the atmosphere, bringing us close to the number 450, which climate scientists warn we must avoid. Environmental regulations have been rolled back or disappeared. Oil and gas development in the US is ravaging our water systems and air. A former head of Monsanto now runs the FDA. All these problems are connected, none is more urgent than any other, and all are linked to social justice problems. Time for a major paradigm shift! What are poets doing? What can poets do? Panelists will discuss their eco-poetic activism and brainstorm ways to come together as a community around this growing crisis.

    Friday 3/28:

                   2-3:30pm – Wilderness Society Conference Room

Re-Imagining the Nature Poem: Post-Pastoral, Post-Colonial, Eco-Spectacle, Eco-Justice Poetry

Melissa Tuckey, Ravi Shankar, Gregory Pardlo, Maria Melendez Kelson, Natalie Diaz

European Romantic conventions continue to influence American conceptions of nature – as outside of ourselves, as depoliticized, a place to meditate in tranquility, a place to prove one’s independence or manhood. Poets on this panel bring a wide range of cultural traditions to the table and are writing stylistically diverse poetries. They will read their own work and discuss the origins of nature poetry in multiple cultural traditions, with an eye for how our conceptions about nature have (or haven’t) changed over time. What role has poetry played in shaping these conceptions? What shifts are in motion? What role might the imagination play in healing our relationships to one another and to the planet? What role might language play?

    Saturday 3/29:

                   11:30am-1pm – Wilderness Society Conference Room

Extending the Circle of Compassion: Including Non-Human Animals in Social Justice Poetry

                        Kazim Ali, Ross Gay, Gretchen Primack, Gabriel Gudding

Philanthropist and philosopher Albert Schweitzer encouraged people to "extend (their) circle of compassion" to include animals, and fellow activists from Coretta Scott King to Cesar Chavez to Ghandi to Dick Gregory to Breeze Harper have done the same. This panel's poets will discuss how and why to include themes of non-human animals in poetry of provocation and witness, and also read work – their own and others' – on this theme. All participants have thought deeply about and written extensively on these topics, and the choices they have made in their lives reflect these values.