Environmentalist Anonymous-Day 12
10/11/23
Last week was devastating. The news from Israel and Gaza was/is hard to process and comprehend. To start off, we did a free write. This was a chance to write about whatever we needed to write about. I offer this to you following along at home.
I brought this powerful book by Paul Hlava Ceballos which is a 2023 WA State Book Award Finalist:
The poems in Paul Hlava Ceballos’s debut collection banana [ ] reveal the extractive relationship the United States has with the Americas and its people through poetic portraits of migrants, family, and personal memories. At the heart of the book is a long poem that traces the history of bananas in Latin America using only found text from sources such as history books, declassified CIA documents, and commercials. The book includes collage, Ecuadorian decimas, a sonnet series in the voices of Incan royalty at the moment of colonization, and a long poem interspersed with photos and the author’s mother’s bilingual idioms. Traversing language and borders, history and story, traditional and invented forms, this book guides us beyond survival to love.
As a prompt, I asked you to think about a specific food, like banana. Maybe consider a fall harvested food, like squash, which is a first food and also something we commonly find in our grocery store. What is your relationship with this food? What is the hidden history behind this food? What memories does it bring up?
We concluded with a golden shovel, using a line that we wrote or one from another poem or article. Here is a good explanation of what the golden shovel form can do?
Good luck! This can be an interesting way to write a new poem or be in conversation with a poem/article you love or find inspiring.
My poetry teacher recently shared the poem “Golden State” which is another great example: https://poems.com/poem/golden-state-niu/
Our next in-person meeting is October 25th from 12-1 pm at Village Books. All are welcome.
We will now be meeting in the Readings Gallery.
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 and post on my Substack page, Her Deepest Ecologies, for easier access (no subscription required to see writing group updates).
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