Environmentalists Anonymous-Day 4
3/8/22
Hi everyone! I meant to get this out last Friday, but I have been on the road since then. My apologies! Welcome to the new faces that joined us last time. I hope we will see you again and thanks to those following online.
How does nature make you feel?
We started the meeting by reflecting on how nature makes us feel. This prompt was inspired by the book The Nature Fix by Florence Williams which is about the science behind nature’s positive effects on the brain. Our responses varied and it started a good conversation about personal wellness and the environment.
Erasure Poems
Looking at Claire Wahmanholm’s new poetry book Meltwater, we made our own erasure poems using articles from the Cascadia Daily. Wahmanhom has several poems called “Meltwater” that is a series of erasure poems based on the essay “How to Mourn a Glacier” by Lacy M. Johnson. In our work, we tackled a wide variety of news topics from owl attacks to bird flu to water quality.
What is an erasure poem?
Erasure poetry, also known as blackout poetry, is a form of found poetry wherein a poet takes an existing text and erases, blacks out, or otherwise obscures a large portion of the text, creating a wholly new work from what remains. https://poets.org/glossary/erasure
For environmental grief, erasure poems add a new layer of meaning. Grab an article or old journal entry about something related to nature and try it out!
The next meeting will be March 22nd at 12 pm.
Environmentalist Anonymous meets the 2nd and 4th Wednesday at Village Books from 12-1 pm. This is free and open to the public. I will email a synopsis of our gathering by the Friday/Saturday after and post on my substack page, Her Deepest Ecologies, for easier access (no subscription required to see writing group updates).
A note about April: There will be no meeting April 14th, but we will meet April 26th at 12 pm.
