Today we conclude our interview with Craig Santos Perez -- followed by a poem from his latest volume, Habitat Threshold.
Writing Out of Time: There’s another great series in the book that consists of “recycled” versions of well-known poems and songs, which are given a political edge: “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Glacier,” for instance. What does literary or cultural “recycling” mean, for you? What does it do? Why recycle these canonical works to talk about geo-engineering, settler colonialism, or global heating? Craig Santos Perez: I believe the past can help us understand the present, whether it's looking to ancestral indigenous wisdom to teach us about sustainable practices, or reading canonical literature to teach us about how to interpret current events. Stevensʻ poem is about seeing through multiple perspectives, which is a helpful way to comprehend ever-shifting glaciers. I recycle Nerudaʻs love sonnets to think about how to love in a time of climate change. "Recycling" is a prevalent practice and discourse within environmentalism. Applying it to poetry made sense to me as I began write this series because recycling suggests a cyclical nature of things and plasticity, both of which are powerful ways to think about poetic form and language itself. WOOT: Some beautiful poems in Habitat Threshold center around your daughter. It seems like part of the “trouble” in the book is about being the parent of a small child in the Chthulucene. You want to protect your child from the scary horrible things in the world while knowing you can’t do so forever. But there are also some hopeful notes in the collection – “Rainbow after the Massacre” is one; “Chanting the Waters,” another; the remarkable final long poem, “Praise Song for Oceania” is another. Are you hopeful for your daughter’s generation? And do you think poetry has a role in creating social change? CSP: Yes, indeed, being a parent at this time has deepened my fear and anxiety about the world. Sadly, the coming decades will most likely be marked by profound change, revolution, and transformation. My children will likely witness climate catastrophe, war, displacement, and social upheaval. But I also dream that they will also experience environmental sustainability, love, peace, and social justice. I try to cultivate hope everyday, and the current climate movement and racial justice movement are nourishing. Yes, I believe we need poetry--and all the arts--to combat destruction. Poetry has the power to educate, inspire, empower, dignify, humanize. To me, creative non-violence is our most powerful force, and poetry keeps our creativity afire. WOOT: One last question: Is “climate poetry” a thing, do you think? Are there poetry books that address the climate crisis that you’d recommend? CSP: Yes, "climate poetry" (or "cli-po") is real. Many poets around the world are writing cli-po and even performing their poems at climate change rallies and protest events. Often, cli-po is included within the larger term of "eco-poetry," and in popular discussions it is overshadowed by the more lucrative genre of "cli-fi," or climate fiction. I recommend these incredible anthologies, all of which I have taught in the past: The Ecopoetry Anthology (2013), Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry (2009), The Arcadia Project: North American Postmodern Pastoral (2012), Big Energy Poets: Ecopoetry Thinks Climate Change (2017), Ghost Fishing: An Eco-Justice Anthology (2018), Fire and Rain: Ecopoetry of California (2018), and Here: Poems for the Planet (2019). _______________________________ from Habitat Threshold: Blood Ivory Honolulu Zoo, for World Elephants Day When we reach the elephant enclosure, I lift our daughter up so she can see them playing in shallow ponds. “Look,” I say. “They love the water, just like you.” Today, 96 elephants are being massacred across Africa’s scarred savannah. Armed poachers surround the herds, who stomp, trumpet, and encircle their calves. Bullets, those small human tusks, bite through thick, wrinkled skin. Do the men still feel awe or majesty, or do they only feel their own awful poverty as they sever the incisors, once used to split bark and forage? Warlords will sell this “white gold” to be carved into jewelry, relics, and art, then smuggled across the planet, our man-made elephant graveyard. This year, 35,000 will be slain. Our daughter waves goodbye to them as we walk towards the exit. Do we build zoos to save what we’ve sacrificed, to display what we dominate, or to cage our own wild urge to kill every breathing being? Our daughter plays with a stuffed elephant doll in the gift shop. “Look,” I say. “It has ears, eyes, and a mouth, just like you.” She touches its tusks, smiles, then touches her own teeth. Note: The United States is the second largest market for ivory, after China. Hawai'i is the third largest market within the United States, after New York and California, both of whom passed laws banning the sale of ivory. This poem was written in support of Senate Bill 2647 (2016), a proposed Hawai'i state law that prohibited selling, offering to sell, purchasing, trading, or bartering ivory, as well as other parts of species that are listed in the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, the International Union for Conservation of Nature, and the Endangered Species Act. ______________ (SB 2647 was subsequently passed by the Hawai'i state legislature and signed by the governor into law. - Ed.)
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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. |