Biotic Crisis

Current scientific consensus argues that our planet is in a sixth mass extinction event due to the rate at which different species are becoming threatened and disappearing. Certain words and ways of life are also under attack, marginalized, censored and demonized. In addition to the environmental and sociopolitical contexts we are living in, the experience of human loss and tragedy also continues as it has for as long as humans have existed; but so does hope, love, compassion, and a search for meaning, for something greater than ourselves.

Biotic Crisis highlights all of these themes, and explores a process to understand self, humanity, our world, and the cosmos. Many of the poems call attention to the natural world as healer, mirror, and sage, finding guidance in the lessons of plants, animals, seasons, celestial bodies, and other earthly realms. The answers are not known or given, but still there is a kind of faith that everything is somehow connected, and while there is so much we do not know, there is a comfort that can be found in mystery.

The poems themselves provide a kind of antidote: by calling attention to things disappearing, maybe we can call them back into being. This re-membering pieces together the almost forgotten, the memories of what is dead and lost, the forbidden words, and broken parts back into a mosaic that while different than what once was, is still beautiful, worthy and whole.