climate science + literary arts
IN THE ANTHROPOCENE, THERE CAN BE NO CLIMATE IN THE OLD SENSE; ONLY WEATHERCULTURES, WITH PEOPLE ACTING AS WEATHERCULTURALISTS.
eric magrane
the compost pile teems
with industrial wreckage
the great acceleration, tipping
points, planetary
boundaries
it was the best of
the apocalypso
it was the worst of
the apocalypse
tempo, tiempo, weather, time
it was the best of
the apocalypse
it was the worst of
the apocalypso
people marched in the streets
people stood with water
people held cabinet meetings under the sea
an artist drew a line
in a city where the ocean water will be
how does one reconcile
the multiple trajectories
of history, catastrophe, and transformation
throw the old categories in with the millipedes and slugs
tempo, tiempo, weather, time
sift and turn, let the air in
for better decomposition
Notes: the title is a quote from Mike Hulme, from his book Weathered: Cultures of Climate. Apocalypso is the title of a book of poetry by Evelyn Reilly.
eric magrane
is an assistant professor of geography at New Mexico State University. He is the editor, with Christopher Cokinos, of The Sonoran Desert: A Literary Field Guide (University of Arizona Press), and with Linda Russo, Craig Santos Perez, and Sarah de Leeuw, of Geopoetics in Practice (forthcoming from Routledge). Recent work also appears in Ecotone, Literary Geographies, GeoHumanities, and in the books Counter-desecration: A glossary for writing within the Anthropocene (Wesleyan), Big energy poets: When ecopoets think climate change (BlazeVOX), and elsewhere.