Join our whirlwind world poetry tour: a lively evening of poetry from the new anthology Earth, Water and Sky: A Bilingual Anthology of Environmental Poems and Russian contemporary poetry translated by Katherine Young. ALL hosts a reading that will build bridges between countries and languages. Jesse Lee Kercheval, editor of Earth, Water and Sky, Katherine Young, translator Catherine Jagoe, local poets and UW MFA students will read poems from the anthology and other works. Kercheval and Young will share stories from the front line of translating work from very different countries and languages. There will be food and drink from the countries to share as well as poetry!
Earth, Water and Sky: An Anthology of Environmental Poetry showcases ten Argentine and Uruguayan poets writing about the pressing issues that face our planet and how to build a a sustainable future. Editor Jesse Lee Kercheval has paired poets and translators to produce a bilingual anthology that is both inspirational and instructive and reminds us how powerfully poetry can touch our minds and hearts.
The poets were selected from a call for the SARAS (South American Institute for Resilience and Sustainability Studies) Prize in Poetry. SARAS is a transdisciplinary institute designed to help South America build a sustainable future. The three prize winners: Natalia Romero of Buenos Aires, Argentina; Sebastian Rivero of Colonia de Sacramento, Uruguay; and Virginia Lucas of Montevideo, Uruguay attended the annual SARAS conference in Uruguay and read their work to the assembled scientists. This collection includes the prize winners and seven other selected poets dedicated to integrating art with social and natural sciences.
Earth, Water and Sky covers an enormous range of imaginative and political terrain. This is an eye-opening, urgent and deeply moving collection.
--Rob Nixon, author of Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor
The poets in Earth, Water and Sky remind us of what today's rampant consumerism would have us forget: that true citizenship in this wondrous space requires both witness and stewardship, celebration as well as critique. I can think of no better medium to convey these truths than poetry. Earth, Water, and Sky is essential reading.
--Quan Barry, author of Loose Strife
These are important, necessary poems that delve deep beneath the surface of the natural world they seek to preserve. The compelling voices gathered in Earth, Water and Sky not only demand to be heard, they demand that we stand up and do something about it.
--Kevin A. Gonzalez, author of Cultural Studies
This bilingual anthology, beautifully edited by Jesse Lee Kercheval, herself a poet and translator, provides necessary glimpses into South American environmental poetry. Along with earth, water and sky, weasels, otters, and tourists with cameras inhabit these poems, as well as "little urban rivers along the unpaved streets," as Virginia Lucas (translated by Jen Hofer) writes. These eco-poems remind us that eco-consciousness must be global as well as home-grown.
--Sharon Dolin, author of Manual for Living
