Tuesdays, on May 5th, 12th, 19th, and 26th at 5pm to 7pm (Eastern)

“Nature is not a place to visit. Nature is who we are.” – Ada Limón.

In this course, we will read and write about our relationship to the Earth in a time of ongoing environmental crisis. While considering how contemporary poets and those who came before us have engaged with their environments, we’ll collectively investigate how to write into our own unique moment in ecological history. How does the climate crisis affect our relationship to the nonhuman world, and how can art respond to change on a geologic scale? Throughout, we’ll tease out differences between the traditional nature poem, the more recently termed ecopoem, and finally its offshoot, the necropastoral—Joyelle McSweeney’s coinage for the “mutated, aberrant, spectacular” experience of nature now necessarily inseparable from our awareness of “mankind’s depredations.” Additional readings will include poems by Camille Dungy, Claire Wahmanholm, David Baker, Ross Gay, W.S. Merwin, and Juliana Spahr, and nonfiction excerpts from works such as Jenny Odell’s How to Do Nothing and Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass.

This class is open to writers of all levels of experience and is not restricted to poets. While course readings will primarily focus on poetry, writing prompts will be applicable to all disciplines.