Can Poems Inspire Action on Climate Change? This New Anthology Is Hopeful.
The collection pairs works by Pulitzer Prize winners and Poet Laureates with a practical guide to activism.
Elizabeth J. Coleman was at an environmental conference, listening to scientists and activists discuss the dire, imminent consequences of climate change. At the catered reception following the event, she thought, “Before I jump out the window, should I have a piece of cake?”
The reality of climate change, and its devastating repercussions, are more severe, and much closer at hand, than we ever imagined. Reading the news, it’s easy to feel afraid, and paralyzed.
But Coleman, a public interest lawyer, poet, and editor, was driven to present a different narrative around climate change — one of warning, but also of optimism and action. She wanted to create “the exact opposite” of the cake incident, she says: to make people “motivated by hope” instead of fear.
Her new anthology, Here: Poems for the Planet, published by Copper Canyon Press and live on Kickstarter now, is a collection of poems from over 125 authors — Pulitzer Prize winners, Poet Laureates, activists, emerging writers, and youth poets as young as six — that confront climate change. It has “an arc that bends towards hope,” says Copper Canyon editor Elaina Ellis, who worked on the book with Coleman.
“Poetry is moving and touching in a way that dry facts are not,” Coleman says. “You can reach people’s hearts. If you tell someone about the hell we’re heading towards, people just despair. They become indifferent. It’s too big. It seems very different when you talk about ‘the polar bear drifting out of history on a wedge of melting ice,’” as a poem by Paul Guest puts it.
“The idea is that words wake us up. Poetry wakes us up.”
The book leads readers through sections that reflect on the beauty of our planet, the devastation humans have wrought, the threats to the animal kingdom in particular, and how young people today experience and think about climate change. It ends with a section that offers galvanizing messages of hope and resilience, followed by a 37-page guide to activism written by the environmental nonprofit Union of Concerned Scientists. (Copper Canyon is donating all royalties from the book’s sale to the organization.)
“Poetry is a way to experience the whole range of emotions about what’s happening, and then move into a more hopeful place,” says Ellis. The guide to activism “is a way to invite people to take those emotions and points of view and move them out into the world.”
“Art is a vehicle that can move us out of panic or apathy and give us some catharsis.”
The idea for the guide sprung out of a larger conversation with Copper Canyon about who the book would be for, Coleman says. They imagined their target reader, “a young woman in Ohio who has never really thought about the environment or the environmental crisis. She picks up the book, and what do we want her to do next? Do we want her to write a poem about the tree in her grandmother’s backyard? Or do we want her to plant a tree in her grandmother’s backyard? That led to the activism guide. You read the book. You’re inspired. Then what?”
The guide provides readers with a concrete set of steps they can take, including contacting legislators, representatives, and corporations to urge them to enact policies and practices that protect our planet. “There’s so much we can do, there’s so much being done. That’s the message we wanted to leave everyone with,” says Coleman. In addition to sending copies of the book to Kickstarter backers, she hopes to get it in the hands of members of U.S. Congress and lawmakers at the state level.
“I want it to make that young women in Ohio not only plant a tree, but also go meet with her state and federal legislators,” Coleman says. “I want her to find out what corporations are doing. I want her to engage with the media. I want her to do whatever she can.
“This is a book that’s meant to wake people up, have them engaged, and begin to embark on a journey, no matter how small it is,” she says. “Maybe someone who has never thought not to take a plastic bag at a grocery store will do that. We give ourselves credit for what we accomplish, and then we go to the next thing: ‘Maybe I’ll write a letter to the editor about this piece of legislation. Okay, now I’m going to go to the next Climate March.’ We get courage, and then we take bigger and bolder steps.”
—Rebecca Hiscott
