Craig Santos’ Perez is best known for his multi-volume documentary poem from unincorporated territory, which deals with the history, culture, politics, and ecology of his home island, Guåhan (Guam). His new book, Habitat Threshold, pans out to reveal a network of concerns that affect the entire world. Perez reminds us of the ways in which racial injustice, homophobic violence, imperialism, neoliberal globalized capital, and ecocide are closely interrelated phenomena. The climate crisis is the direct subject of many of the poems, but it’s never entirely out of sight or mind in any of them. For instance, the poem “Teething Borders” flat-out tells us that
. . . by the end of this year, 65 million will be uprooted, and in the coming years, climate change will displace millions more – half will be children. But this isn’t a bloodless statistic for Perez. In another poem, “Care,” he tries to comfort his infant daughter – and can’t help thinking about those displaced persons: “Daddy’s here, daddy’s here,” I whisper. Would we reach the Mediterranean in time? Am I strong enough to straighten my legs into a mast, balanced with the pull and drift of the currents? . . . Writing Out of Time recently interviewed Craig Santos Perez via e-mail about (among other things) the relation between poetry and climate chaos. Hopefully, this will give you a better sense of the book. Writing Out of Time: I believe this is your first poetry book that’s not part of (or from) the multi-volume “from unincorporated territory.” Habitat Threshold seems more like a collection, and the style(s) of writing and thematic focus(es) seem kind of different to me than your previous books. Is that a misperception, or do you think you’re going in a new direction here? Craig Santos Perez: Yes, Habitat Threshold is a stand-alone collection that brings together the eco-poetry I have been writing the past several years. My "from unincorporated territory" series focuses on the history, politics, and ecologies of Guam, my home island. The series is still ongoing (the next linked volume is forthcoming in 2022), but I am also writing poems that are not related to Guam but moreso related to the pandemic and climate issues. So I would say they are parallel directions. WOOT: Global heating is obviously a major concern of the book, and we think of Pacific-island nations as being among the most vulnerable. What would be the effects on Guam, in a couple/three decades, if things keep going like they’re going? CSP: Guam is a mountainous island so it would not become completely submerged by rising sea levels like other low-lying islands and atolls. The shorelines of Guam would be inundated and impact homes, businesses, and roads. The tourism industry, which is the major economic industry, would be devastated. Our corals reefs will be bleached due to ocean warming and acidification, and fish stocks would collapse. Temperatures would become unbearably hot, typhoons will be more intense and frequent, drought will be more common and decrease agricultural production, and infectious diseases will be more prevalent. It would indeed be chaotic and frightening. WOOT: Yeah, I guess Cyclone Harold gave us a taste of the kind of damage extreme weather can do in Oceania, beyond sea-level rise. I want to delve into how you go about addressing these issues in the poems. There is a devastating series of poems that looks at various U.S. holidays and their costs to humans and others; and each of them invokes a name that has been coined to describe the period we’re currently in. So, “Halloween in the Anthropocene,” “Thanksgiving in the Plantationcene,” and so on. How did you think of using holidays as a way to explore larger social and ecological issues? CSP: Holidays are important because they give the impression of stability and predictability. Thanksgiving, for example, occurs at the same time every year and the meal is usually the same as well. However, in our times, even these seemingly unchanging holidays are changing. So I wanted to capture how the various epochal classifications (the "-cenes") help us see these changes and defamiliarize/destabilize the holidays. WOOT: They certainly do that. In fact, the book never lets those of us in the global north forget that our comfortable way of life is at the expense of the well-being of people of the global south and at the expense of our common planet. But at the same time, it seems sometimes like there’s a feeling of being thoroughly interpellated in the culture-ideology of consumerism and the carbon economy. Were these poems a way for you to think through that tension? CSP: Yes, I hoped to map my own entanglements within the capitalist, carbon economies. I eat meat. I drive. I travel on airplanes. I shop at the mall and on Amazon. I use plastic. Poetry is a space where I can express how it feels to live within (and be attentive/tensed to) the complex ecology of humans, animals, nature, and things. I wanted the book to "stay with the trouble," as Donna Haraway puts it, and whom I quote at the beginning of my book. (to be continued Thursday July 2 . . .)
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satellite image of smoke from forest fires (lower right) 30 mi. from Arctic Ocean (white stuff at top) here’s another reason to care
about climate change even if you don’t care about climate change: your mortgage: i see in the news where this nonprofit sez the govt. underestimates by 70% # of properties in u.s. at “substantial risk of flooding” due to climate chaos (check to see abt yours) plus which: billions $$ in property value lost along coasts already (sea level rise duh) -- plus which: try getting a mortgage at all, along coasts (harder than it used to be) you may not believe it, but the bean counters do; insurance companies do. speaking of flooding . . . 1 million people homeless in assam: state govt. sez “situation remains extremely grave w/ several embankments breached” & they say “turning critical by the hour” & all that rainwater flows downhill & downstream to bangladesh (they warned us abt what wld happen to bangladesh): 100,000s of humans w/o drinking water w. ukraine lacks drinking water, too, due to flood water (well, you can drink it if you want to but you can also get water- borne diseases) & “abidjan’s weak drainage system was quickly overwhelmed. major thoroughfares flooded & cars and debris swept away, & residents in low-lying homes forced to seek safety.” & 1k water rescues in hubei; & roads washed out in thailand; schools & homes inundated in sarawak; landslide in n. sikkim; torrential rain in s. japan; & c. meanwhile siberia burns: 5x as many wildfires as last week -- 2.85 m acres as of sat. -- 30 mi south of arctic circle, in the “coldest permanently inhabited region on the planet” -- where they had 100 f last week, a once- in-100,000-years event (& we were lucky enough to be alive for it!) we won’t talk about how much co2 & methane thawing permafrost will set free, or what that will do to those of us farther south . . . b/c we don’t know for sure it will happen, right? so go ahead, live yr life, get married, have kids, try to get a mortgage, rip off that mask: you can’t live yr life in fear, right? right? If there can be nothing new under the sun, then there cannot be an exponential increase in global heating; or a massive increase in the number and duration of droughts within a generation; or an addition of several meters to sea levels within the space of a few decades; or the notion that a single species could bring all this about. The scientists certainly didn’t believe it — at first. And they are continually surprised by each new, ever-more-improbable set of data about the global climate. So unsurprisingly, the rest of us can’t “wrap our heads around” the rate and magnitude of climate change. Ghosh cites author Adam Sobel as claiming that Hurricane Sandy became such a disaster precisely because “the essential improbability of the phenomenon led [officials] to underestimate the threat and thus delay emergency measures.”* And the idea of large swaths of the earth becoming uninhabitable within the lifetime of people now living . . . well, it’s alarmist. It’s absurd. It’s fantastical. Which means that, even if you aren’t a “climate denier,” still, on some level, you the fiction reader (and citizen) really can’t believe what is happening in fact.
Consequently, if you are a fiction writer who wishes to write about such things, your work will be relegated to the category of “genre fiction” — sci-fi, fantasy, alternative history, [whatever]punk, etc. — meaning that it will not be taken seriously as “literary fiction.” In other words, the deeply ingrained habits of thought of bourgeois culture are still dominant. If a novelist writes about the climate crisis — even if it is a realist novel about what is happening before our very eyes in the present — they are writing “speculative fiction.” But, as Ghosh notes: . . . cli-fi is made up mostly of disaster stories set in the future, and that, to me, is exactly the rub. The future is but one aspect of the Anthropocene: this era also includes the recent past, and, most significantly, the present. . . . it is precisely not an imagined “other” world apart from ours; nor is it located in another “time” or another “dimension.” By no means are the events of the era of global warming akin to the stuff of wonder tales; yet it is also true that in relation to what we think of as normal now, they are in many ways uncanny . . . He calls for the literary world to take “speculative fiction” more seriously. But he also notes that there is, in fact, climate fiction set in the present day (he cites Liz Jensen’s novel Rapture and Barbara Kingsolver’s Flight Behavior; one could add Jenny Offill’s recent Weather). And, as Ghosh points out, all of these premises are appropriate to the actual historical state of the world at present. To a certain extent, this is a discussion of genre-policing, which is a matter of influence, gatekeeping, and resources. But it’s also about our imagination: what we can admit to it or from it, and what we cannot. The corollary of “nobody would believe it if you put it in a novel” is “it can’t happen here.” But we damn well better believe it’s happening here — and everywhere. How does all this relate to a B-grade epic from the 5th century? Well, in order to understand the Dionysiaca, one has to enter a world in which prodigies and wonders happen on a regular basis; in which desires and habits are thwarted by seemingly random “acts of god”(s) on a regular basis; and in which things can be said that would not be taken seriously “IRL.” So, perhaps the epics and wonder tales of years gone by and the climate science of today have more in common than we think. Perhaps letting one’s imagination “run wild” is the only way to “wrap your head around” the present, let alone figure out what to do with it. As Ghosh puts it, "if certain literary forms are unable to negotiate these torrents" (literal and metaphorical) caused by climate chaos, "then they will have failed -- and their failures will have to be counted as an aspect of the broader imaginative and cultural failure that lies at the heart of the climate crisis." Indeed, it may take relatively new literary forms to do so; the models and inspiration for such forms are at least as likely to come from premodern as from postmodern literature. Io Bakhos! ____________________ * This dynamic is the premise for Nathaniel Rich’s novel Odds Against Tomorrow, possible the most fully-realized work of cli-fi. i’ll be god-
dammed if i let a li’l ol’ virus (hell, you can’t even see ‘em!) run my life i’m a free-born, free- bird american i came into this world not wearing a mask & i’m not about to let them take away my constitutional right not to wear a mask now! we the people are exempt from nature: this is america in the anthropocene (i just told my computer to learn to spell “anthropocene.” it’s about time, america) speaking of learning: did you know that fires in the arctic this yr & last released more co2 than those of the last 16 yrs combined? (“you’ve got so much dried-out material, it can burn, and burn, and burn”) did you know that buildings in arctic cities are collapsing from uneven permafrost thaw? (“i’ve heard of dozens of houses falling in, and a few churches. there are multiple graveyards that are falling in, and there’s nothing that anybody can do”) did you know that, in ukraine, “10,399 houses, 9 rural health posts, 15,610 residential yards, 4,546 basements, 7,182 hectares of agricultural land are inundated; 149 km of roads are destroyed & 589 km damaged; 90 bridges are destroyed and 169 bridges are damaged. over 4,000 bank protections are destroyed” due to flooding? did you know the locust swarms have moved from africa as far north as sardinia? did you know that over ⅓ of senegal is bedroughted? that 30% of its drylands are desertified? did you know that in assam, 38 k have been flooded out & hit the road? did you know that the flooding in china has affected more than 11 m people & destroyed over 2 m acres of cropland? that in vietnam, rice farmers work at night, w/headlamps, b/c it’s too hot during day? (“temperature are rising one or two degrees [Celsius] every year”) that the grand canyon is so hot hikers’ boots are melting? hell nah -- i came into this world knowing everything i need to know & you'll never take away my right not to The world is in the grip of a deadly resurgent pandemic. People are rising up in the streets of the US against structural racism. The country is led by a megalomaniac with borderline personality disorder. So, I’m doing what any poet would do in such a situation: I’m translating an ancient poem that’s written in a language I can’t read.
That’s right: I’m part of a cast of thousands (well, dozens) of writers and classicists who are translating (or, in my case, “translating”) the Dionysiaca, by Nonnos of Panopolis. Nonnos was a Hellenized Egyptian, thought to have lived some time around the year 400 c.e. He is known only through the Dionysiaca and, weirdly enough, a paraphrase of the Gospel of John. But the Dionysiaca is his opus: it is the last, the longest, and probably the worst, epic of antiquity. He wrote all 30,000 or so lines of the poem in Homeric Greek, which would be like me writing in Old English. The story follows the story of Dionysos from his birth, through his invasion of India, various other adventures, and final enthronement on Olympos. It is overwritten, highly conventional, and has been described as baroque (or rococo), or simply “bad.” We are trying to have fun with it. And that’s part of the attraction: distraction. At the start of the pandemic, a lot of people were reading spec-fic about pandemics. Now they just want to binge-watch comedies on Netflix. So, I guess the Dionysiaca is my comedy on Netflix. But then I thought of Amitav Ghosh’s argument, in The Great Derangement, about the history of narrative, as it relates to the climate crisis. Back in the day, Ghosh notes, epics, fables, chronicles, romances, miracle plays, wonder tales, etc. were filled with “prodigious happenings”; they delighted in “the unheard of and the unlikely.” As for prose narrative, he cites the Decameron, Arabian Nights, and Journey to the West (we might add The Golden Ass) as being among this type, which “ranges widely and freely over vast expanses of time and space. It embraces the inconceivably large . . . .” However, with the “Enlightenment,” the rise of capitalism and its protagonist, the Bourgeoisie, the empirical replaced the miraculous as the focus of explanatory stories. Moreover, in physical sciences, particularly geology, a consensus arose that large-scale changes happen very very slowly, over vast expanses of time — not in sudden cataclysms; this view is known as “gradualism” or “uniformitarianism.” All of this came about at the same time — and possibly led to — the emergence of the realist novel. The unstated assumption of “the regularity of bourgeois life” in the mid-19th century is reflected in a type of fiction that de-emphasizes plot, restricts itself to the realm of "everyday life," and foregrounds description and inner psychological states. If something is “stranger than fiction,” this, for Ghosh, is only a way of saying that fiction should contain nothing that is too strange. The gradualist view of science held sway well into the 20th century (hence the difficulty in getting scientists to accept that an asteroid may have extincted the dinosaurs); and the gradualist view is still precisely the dominant mode of narrative to the present, in his view. This history bears upon climate change in several ways. First, the time period is the same in which the growth of the carbon economy — and, hence, the build-up of greenhouse gases — took off; that economy became normalized via cultural forms (such as realist novels). Secondly, miracles, prodigies, monsters, and cataclysms were banished from prose fiction; the novel of "bourgeois predictability" replaced them. Thirdly, and most importantly, because the dominant cultural narrative became gradualist, the very idea that sudden shifts or disasters could account for history — let alone happen in the present — came to seem somewhat absurd and primitive. So if, for instance, mean global temperatures started rising, it had to be part of very long-term climate patterns that had happened thousands of times before in the history of the earth. Nothing to see, folks. . . . to be continued Friday . . . Next week: Craig Santos Perez greta has a podcast
(well yeah duh doesn’t everyone, but this is greta) — & she sez the covid crisis means: we can spend (print) lots of money if we want to, we can cancel big international meetings, we can change behavior, even get the media to focus on one thing for more than 20 minutes, if we think the threat is big enough "if we are to avoid a climate catastrophe, we have to make it possible to tear up contracts, abandon existing deals & agreements on a scale we can't even begin to imagine today,” sez she & who are “we”? “hope does not come from politics, business, or finance,” but “hope comes from the people, from democracy, from you” (esp. if “you” are engaging in massive disruption — vide recent events.) there “you” have it meanwhile today i guess you heard the big news: 100 f recorded n. of arctic circle (unverified but entirely plausible) say it w/me: “first. time. on. record.” elsewhere: it’s dry and it’s wet. first the dry (and hot): aukland, n.z. water sitch is “critical”: reservoir < 45% capacity, < ½ normal rain in 1st ½ of year as of mon. am, 186 k acres scorched in arizona bush fire, 45% contained; 90% of utah in drought: driest april on record + may rain ↓ 60% = 300 wildfires — those bark beetles, ubiquitous anthropocene pests, kill the trees, turning them to tinder; even beautiful lacustrine quebec sees 178k acres burn in one of several forest fires big scoop of the sahara heads westward on the winds, reducing visibility, hurting air in the caribbean, set to spread across the s.e. u.s.: biggest such dust-plume in 50 yrs -- hot hot dry dry -- 110 in s. spain . . . then the wet: massive flooding on yangtze -- 10 provinces under x-treme flood alerts: “gas stations, street lights, & telephone poles have disappeared beneath a brown soup of floodwaters”; 3 gorges dam in danger? w/media cut off (by nature, this time), it’s hard to tell in india, the big 3 -- ganges, brahmaputra & meghna “already filled to the brim” by heavy rain, “unusual for this time of year,” 100s of homes washed away, more rain on the way . . . torrents sweep through santa cruz, bolivia neighborhoods; emergency measures in serbia -- 700 houses inundated, roads cut; moscow endures 70% of usual june rain in the span of a a few hours; tasmania empluviated: “warnings that trees may fall”; singapore flash floods snarl traffic, waterlog roads, even feature “a green dustbin floating away” . . . and from lagos, this report: "upon arrival at the scene, it was discovered that the canal along alapafuja close linking bank olemoh was submerged as a result of flooding & a 17-yr-old girl was swept away ~12:30 pm (monday). however, her body could not been found as the response team searched the adjoining canals. operation suspended till morning.” the girl’s name was given only as “ayisat.” Due to the unprovoked attack by the government of Venezuela on American interests abroad and the ensuing police action against that country by the armed forces of the United States, the President has ordered a temporary shutdown of publications whose contents are deemed inimical to the successful outcome of Operation Liberty.
Accordingly, this blog has been temporarily suspended in accordance with U.S. Code 18, Chapter 115, § 2388 (a). This suspension is temporary only and will be ended at such time as hostilities are concluded, provided the operators are found to be innocent of any violation of statute law or executive order. Note: The objectionable content referred to may or may not directly relate to Operation Liberty or incidents leading to it, the armed forces of the United States or of Venezuela, or classified material. Any statements deemed by the Commander in Chief to be antithetical to U.S. interests or values will be considered in direct violation of the statute and enabling orders. Such statements include, but are not limited to:
Remember: For the Duration, Americans should watch what they say, watch what they do. God bless America, and God bless the President of the United States. [The preceding is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental. Void where prohibited. For now.] “the real climate movement is
global, led by black, indigenous & other colonized & racialized people” sez writer nylah burton -- interesting how things look when usamericans zoom out to see the big picture instead of cropping the little ones . . . “climate justice activists are not only fighting for the planet, but for their very survival,” sez thanu yakupitiyage of 350.org, & survival, as we know, concentrates the mind wonderfully no news to the global south: not to rahma hassan mahmoud, pastoralist in somaliland, whose 300 goats & sheep succumbed to drought; even her herd of camels died: “it was like they were poisoned,” it happened so fast; when everybody’s livestock died, they headed off to get food aid. “if anybody still doubts climate change, they just have to come here,” sez the u.n.h.c.r. official & in lagos, flooding. why? well, maybe climate “change”? but also “ongoing sand filling of the wetland and lagoon . . . for a purpose unknown to the residents . . .” (those wetlands soak up water & if they aren’t there, it all runs off, you see — & there’s a lot more to run off) & 112-117 f in rajasthan, & . . . well, you get the idea. but lest we white folks in the global north think none of this applies to us: “the u.k. can no longer be considered a wet country because of the effects of climate change,” sez the head of their enviro agency, “as he urged people to turn off taps,” after driest may on record — despite many places flooded out dublin had more rain in 1 hr. wed. than in all of may; moscow had its hottest june 17 since 1892; s.w. florida had 2nd hottest spring (hottest was 2015); “normally, it gets a little hotter and then a little hotter,” sez the lawn guy from fort meyers; “this year it happened all at once, like someone flipped a light switch”; 90 f in caribou, maine at 11 am; only 85 in miami; "it's almost like weather whiplash. we're going from extreme hot to seasonably cool conditions," sez the manitoba weatherman (+ the flooded crops, wind damage, hailstorms, &c.); as arizona’s covid cases soar, so do its wildfires: 3 x as much land burned so far as this time last year -- an area bigger than denver; & as an added plus, usamericans, get this: those wacky fire ants are climbing the appalachians, surviving at higher altitudes -- which means they can now live farther north: "i wouldn't put a limit on it at this point,” sez the researcher. over there over there up yonder, farther north, send the world send the word to beware what folks in some regions, neighborhoods, & reservations knew a long time ago I read an interesting review essay in the NY Rev. of Books' last issue, by Elisa Gabbert. She’s reviewing recent poetry collections by Christopher Nealon and Carolyn Forché (mostly Nealon’s The Shore), under the rubric of “climate poetry,” which she describes as “a poetry full of fire and flooding and refugees” — which is a pretty good description of much of the world, at the moment.
Of climate poetry, she writes: . . . it’s a reminder of our helplessness. Awareness that we’re more or less doomed—but how doomed exactly?—is a source of constant cycling anxiety, frustration, despair, and finally boredom. If global warming is the only subject, looming as it always does in the background or just above us or all around us, we are doomed to be bored by our own doom. One certainly can write in a boring way about climate change, and many do. Dull writing can make even Armageddon look dull. But that’s not the claim here. The claim is that the topic is boring — inherently boring, because ubiquitous. Gabbert writes that “poetry often has a cooling effect. A poem is yesterday’s or last year’s mood in a still frame, or perhaps a looping gif. We read it with the cool gaze of contemplation.” The problem, for the discriminating poetry reader in the metropole, is that the climate crisis is already passé (“o — that again”). “We” poets feel nostalgic, resigned, and detached, which means “we” poetry readers fall asleep. The theory of the avant-garde, the ceaseless generation of the New, fails to please. “Weather is the prototypical boring conversation topic,” Gabbert writes; “climate too will become boring.” Or already has. Such is the vibe in Brooklyn. But it’s hard to imagine this review having been written by a Kenyan critic. Or one from Bangladesh. Or anybody who lives in Siberia, Tuvalu, Honduras, or (the late) Paradise, California. Weather isn’t boring, if a tornado is bearing down on your town — then it’s plenty exciting (trust me: I live in Kansas). Rather, I think the problem Gabbert identifies is the lack of any sense of personal threat. If you don’t think climate chaos is a serious problem for you in the near term, then of course it’s going to be boring. It’s like watching a documentary about galactic coronas instead of one about the coronavirus. Interesting in its way, but very very far removed. White liberal guilt is just guilt, not fear or rage. Guilt can get boring, too. “Fire and flooding and refugees — sure it's tragic and all, but it’s so been done.” Unless you’ve got fires and refugees in your city streets. Having said all this, I can’t argue with Gabbert’s characterization of USAmerican “climate poetry” (including some of mine). Roy Scranton wrote an essay about climate change titled “We’re Doomed. Now What?” Much elegiac contemplation of the climate crisis could be titled “We’re Doomed. Yeah? So?” One could argue that this apocalyptic ennui is another manifestation of postmodern belatedness and flattening of affect. But part of the problem, perhaps, is the professionalization & academization of poetry in the U.S. The New-Critical ideal of the techno-critic-poet really does still undergird the institutional position of professors of creative writing, regardless of whatever “counter-hegemonic commitments” they may harbor or write about. We are to teach technique; we, like our more research-oriented colleagues, are supposed to write about things, not participate in them. That would contaminate our results. It is possible that the coronavirus crisis and concomitant economic Depression will cause poets and everyone else to re-evaluate what they’re (we’re) doing. What is the relation of literature to ethics, to science, to traumatizing extreme weather events or police actions? Should writing be a full-time job? Or something that everyone does (while they’re not foraging and looking for potable water)? Indeed, is it there to distract us from the asteroid hurtling toward us? As Gabbert writes, “Poems do make things happen, but not enough.” And I’m not sure that switching genres to nonfiction gets one off the hook. For now, we can still publish books and book reviews and, as of this writing, teach poetry workshops. The AWP is still extant. How much longer this state of affairs will obtain is another matter. If writers in the global north really face up to the shift that is taking place, the problem will be less one of aesthetics than of acknowledging the thoroughgoing transformation of our world — which will involve destruction, as well as creation — perhaps for the better, perhaps not. All of that may add up to some very interesting times. new study out of oxford sez
only 3% of people worldwide think the climate crisis “not serious at all.” unless they’re americans -- 12% of whom say “what me worry?”; but also 9% of swedes (greta?! do something!) in scandanavia & low countries, only 50% see x-treme threat in climate change (isn’t there a fairy tale warning about that? maybe hans xian anderson?) but in the global south, it’s 85-90% (kenya, s. africa, phillipines, chile) — the places where drought, cyclone, locusts & other plagues are punishing the locals (keep yr finger in the dike, boy! & silver skates ain’t no good on thin ice . . . ) people on the business end: nothi mlalazi of bulawayo, zimbabwe & her daughters, who “spend most of our time in long, winding queues, impatiently waiting to fill up our containers” with water, from trucks that come round every few days during 3 mo. w/dry taps -- they must push & shove to horn into the line -- no social distance between or among the people, who spend up to 12 hrs there ray & bonnie arnold, w. australian farmers, celebrate the “water deficiency” declaration for their town, meaning they can get trucked water. "it seems to be if we don't get the summer rain … the outlook is very grim” < 7 in. of rain, all last year (“but they live in a desert, they’re used to that” -- uh, no: it’s < ½ of norm) ditto in inner mongolia, where < an inch of rain fell in april & may, where farmer zhang aiqin sez “strong wind and little rain have greatly affected the growth of crops," like corn seedlings, scoured by the sandy wind, replanting after replanting or yacouba kone, farmer in mali, ravaged by drought & desertification, whose government used money from farm price supports to buy covid equipment. price of cotton ↓ 25% — & cotton farmers are paid to grow grains, too. but not now — meaning no money for fertilizer for fiber or food, meaning less food. so "if the state does not take urgent measures to support farmers, the coronavirus will jeopardise food security,” sez he. + heatwave in siberia, pocked by fires; + heatwave in saudi (115-122 f); + lo 110s, winds 40 mph in s.w. u.s., 85k+ acres burned so far in arizona ; + tornadoes, duststorm, torrential rains & flooding, houses destroyed by lightning in britain . . . “o please, spare me yr bougie-privilege disaster porn . . . ” ok, well, maybe, but not seeing & hearing the people won’t make them go away |
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June 2021
Kristin Prevallet Author/Editor
I'm a writer & teacher in Lawrence, Kansas who actually believes the scientists. I wrote a book of poems called Of Some Sky that seems to have something to do with all this. |