Ecopoetics in the Era of Climate Crisis: Writing (Building) New Worlds // Jesse Holth

“a boat, even a wrecked and wretched boat/still has all the possibilities of moving.”—Dionne Brand

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In the opening essay for this series, Tiffany Morris asks, “What can we do to mitigate, predict, or negotiate with the future?” This question is key. We are all actively involved—like it or not, acknowledge it or not—in a struggle for survival. The stakes couldn’t be higher. Morris suggests we build new worlds, “Better than the one that faced the apocalypse.”

We can create a better world—but what does that world look like?

Ecopoetry is an old form. As it continues to expand beyond the traditional definitions of “nature poetry” and opens to encompass new meaning, it can help us make sense of a world in crisis. It is a tool through which we envision a different future—one of possibility. Ellen Chang-Richardson explains, in her essay for the series, that “Ecopoetics can no longer be simply enacting or performing the natural world onto a page.” She says there’s an inherent urgency that demands our action—and it is our duty as writers to “fight the old rhetoric that our systems must rely on fossil fuels and resource extraction.”

We know that Indigenous knowledge is the heart of climate justice. Leanne Betasamosake Simpson tells us, “Real solutions require a rethinking of our global relationship to the land, water, and to each other. They require critical thinking about our economic and political systems. They require radical systemic change.” We must reject the capitalist, “accumulation society” that led us down the path of climate destruction.

As our idea of “ecopoetry” becomes more complex, nuanced, and robust, it evolves in parallel with the world around us. In her essay, Farah Ghafoor says, “I want to be reminded again and again of the current and future state of the earth through poetry, and I want to see new ideas, approaches, and attitudes toward climate actions and activism.” She argues that the poetry community has its own responsibility and role in the climate crisis—that it is a privilege to have climate anxiety instead of “real-time climate awareness” on the frontlines, and that poets and literary communities need to utilize their power and reach.

We must always examine our own intersections with privilege. Survival is not a guarantee—there are those who have always known this, who have been marginalized and oppressed by the colonial heteropatriarchy. If the very concept of “ecopoetry” is cracked open, something new can grow from the ashes: indeed, it seems this transformation may already be underway.

I began this series with a question: why aren’t more poets writing about the climate crisis? It’s undoubtedly our job, as many of the writers have argued—and a vitally important one.

But perhaps what is perceived as a lack of climate poetry stems from a problem of classification. The truth is, we are all writing ecopoetry, in our own way. Even when it’s not clear, or obvious, or what we expect it to look like. When we are limited by our expectations of what “ecopoetry” is supposed to be, there is so much that we miss.

Ecopoetry means different things to different people. As Camille T. Dungy has explained, “Many black writers simply do not look at their environment from the same perspective … The poems describe moss, rivers, trees, dirt, caves, dogs, fields: elements of an environment steeped in a legacy of violence, forced labor, torture, and death.” Certainly, as Sanna Wani argues in her essay for the series, there is an “affective whiteness” that must be deconstructed from ecopoetry.

Terrence Abrahams has written about the relationship of transness and queerness to ecopoetics, explaining that “What we think of as queerness abounds in nature,” that Western science has become “too definitive, too absolute, and often too resistant to redefinition.” We cannot let this be true of ecopoetics—definitions are always changing, as we come to know the world in different ways. Noting that Canadians like Don McKay and Margaret Atwood are considered ecopoets, but that “their school of nature poetry is not mine,” Abrahams is interested in an ecopoetry that is “linked to queerness and transness, concern about climate change, expresses the multifaceted efforts of environmental awareness and activism, and works toward a decolonized world.”

According to Dionne Brand, “language is not communication but reinvention.” As we write poetry, we reinvent the world. We can make real the future we want. Billy-Ray Belcourt has said the struggle to reinvent the world is reflected in the landscape of so-called CanLit itself—that the old “national myth of Canadian life” is dying, and the rebirth is found in “alternative literary communities that are first and foremost about freedom, and flourishing for those who continue to be oppressed.”

We must turn a critical eye toward gatekeeping, and failures of representation—because who decides what gets printed? Not only published, but praised, rewarded, funded? These are questions we continue to ask, the system we continue to interrogate and redefine—perhaps even dismantle. If we can build something better, why shouldn’t we?

We are changing what “literature” is, what it looks like, and what it can be. In the same way, we can tackle ecological breakdown and create the world we deserve. True change—real, lasting change—comes from collective action. It comes from us, saying “Enough is enough.” We are building a revolution, piece by piece, poem by poem. We are empowering ourselves through writing, through discourse and dialogue, through community-building and organizing. We are breaking the canon.

We can build our community until it is the whole damn world.

When we come together; when we keep each other safe; when we demand better—we can change the systems that got us here. Belcourt says, “Poetry is always already a kind of futuristic project.” We must write for the future we want, not the one being forced upon us.

It’s not too late to turn this around. The future is not predetermined. But, as Audre Lorde once said, “Revolution is not a one-time event.” We must put in the work. We must continue to imagine new worlds—we must act for the climate we want, and not give up or yield to the one being built for us.

We will not be silent. We will make a scene. We will protest—and we will walk the fuck out.

Jesse Holth is a writer, editor, and poet living in Lekwungen territory. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Room, Grain, CV2, Canthius, and other publications. She recently served as Guest Editor for the Abrupt Environments issue of antilang., and Guest Poetry Editor for the final issue of The Tishman Review. She is currently working on two full-length collections.