Waking Up to the Earth: Connecticut Poets in a Time of Global Climate Crisis

Edited by Margaret Gibson
Grayson Books 2021

The poems in Waking Up to the Earth are written by poets who are waking up and paying closer attention to the earth. Mindfulness, as David Hinton describes it, is “that attentiveness to things at hand that enable us to inhabit our lives with immediacy as a rich and profound experience.” And what these poets in their different ways are waking up to is the close kinship between poetry and ecology, both of which focus on interrelationship. A poem weaves a web of related thoughts and rhythms and images; an eco-system is all about interdependence and the energetic relationship of all sentient beings.

In their own particular and indigenous words and images, these poets say where they are, who they are, and what else lives with them in their surrounding world, be it terrestrial or oceanic, forested or plain, ice-bound or tropical. These poets bind us to the earth.

Thirteen Connecticut poets will read their poems from the anthology, Waking Up to the Earth: Connecticut Poets in a Time of Global Climate Crisis, edited by Connecticut’s Poet Laureate, Margaret Gibson, on April 13th at 7 PM via Zoom webinar.

Readers include: Robert Cording, Carol Chaput, Debbie Gilbert, Jim Finnegan, Joan Hofmann, Michael “Chief” Peterson, Luisa Caycedo-Kimura, Aaron Caycedo-Kimura, Pegi Dietz Shea, Pat Hale, Julia Paul, Jon Andersen and  Margaret Gibson.

Registration is required via Zoom. There will not be an open mic after this event. Discussion and Q&A will follow.

The anthology is available for purchase from Amazon or directly from Grayson Books.