What Sparks Poetry is a serialized feature that explores experiences and ideas that spark the writing of new poems. In Ecopoetry Now, poets from Canada, Mexico, and the US engage in an ecopoetic conversation across borders. Each Monday's delivery brings you a poem from the author and an excerpt from their essay.
let the colonial borders be seen for the inaccurate fabrications that they are i hereby honour what the flow of water teaches us hydrology is a sacred bond, embedded in our plump, moist cells, in our breaths that transpire to return to the clouds that gave us life through rain in the rivers and aquifers that we and our neighbours drink from in the oceans that our foremothers came from a watershed teaches not only humbleness but climate literacy the languages we need to interpret the sea’s rising voice its currents bearing the plastic from our fridges and closets a gyre of karma recirculates in the form of body burden i hereby invoke watershed wisdom to guide us through the toxic muck i will apprentice myself to creeks and tributaries, groundwater and glaciers listen for the salty pulse within, the blood that recognizes marine ancestry in its chemical composition and intuitive pull i will learn through immersion, flotation, and transformation as water expands and contracts, i will fit myself to its ever-changing dimensions molecular and spectacular, water will return what we give it, be that arrogance and poison, reverence and light, ambivalence and respect let our societies be revived as watersheds
"In the context of a colonized society that reduces freedom into superficial consumer choices or bluntly eliminates that freedom through systemic violence, writing can question unjust hierarchies and unthinking habits that need to be reconsidered. It can make space for the imagination to move swiftly as dragonflies at dusk, or as easily as otters floating affectionately together. It makes room for a world where every creature has a place, every life form matters."
Join Poetry Daily Editorial Board member Brian Teare for poetry and conversation about ecopoetics with our intenational panel of authors and activists.
"The writing in the booklet is a rare depiction of Shakur’s early talent for wordplay and lyricism....and deals with themes that he would go on to explore with his music as an adult including Black liberation, mass incarceration, race and masculinity."
