What I'm Reading: Queer Climate & Eco-Poetics
Let's Commune with Queer Poetry
"Being queer saved my life. Often we see queerness as deprivation. But when I look at my life, I saw that queerness demanded an alternative innovation from me. I had to make alternative routes, it made me curious, it made me ask this is not enough for me.” – Ocean Vuong
Hello friends, lovers, countryfolk — mend-free your queers,
Here's what I'm reading — poetry written by LGBTQIA folks. I want to share some with you and include something descriptive about how, to me, these are nature / climate / earth / eco / environmental / involve-elements-of-environment themed-poems, but immediately with every description I write, each feel far-too narrow to contain the multiverses these writings explore.
There's a deep history of queer poets to honor, to be sure, some known for specifically writing eco poems, some not, and many you already know, Arthur Rimbaud, James Baldwin, Audre Lorde, Mary Oliver — and more, and as soon as I mention, I'll say I include none of these folks here! I'm exhausted by how non-exhaustive this post-as-list is. So I promise to include them in future queer poetry posts — for sure, I plan to honor the ecosystem of foundations. But for the purposes of this post, we'll stay a bit more contemporary.
Queer Earth Poetry
Quoted from Noʻu Revilla's ‘When You Say “Protesters” Instead of Protecters’
Your lips so Sunday still. Sometimes I almost believe you. So it’s best I keep hiding knives in my hair, the way my grandmother – not god – the way my grandmother intended.
Also check out No'u Revilla's collab I love in this cover story for Milkweed “letters to the gut house: collaboration & decolonial love in Hawaiʻi”
Quoted from Kayleb Rae Candrilli's, Summering in Wildwood, NJ
this poem is not so much about a beach
as it is about arriving,
blowing stop signs
until the coast affirms
that lines are always changing,
and the tide tells me
my body can morph
as many times as it needs.
More I love from Kayleb Rae Candrilli:
Quoted from Kemi Alabi, debuting their collection “Against Heaven”
Against Heaven (A poem for Sunday)
Look right:
me and mine kissed alive—greening. Curl up and chime against us—the river’s born here.
I love this interview with Atmos on Writing a Queer Black Eco-Pleasure Politic. And a couple more I love of theirs:
Atmos Magazine
Since I just linked to a piece from Atmos, I wanted to recommend them as a fantastic go-to queer ecology media source. They have a legit tagged content SECTION on #queerecology, and will frequently contextualize most reporting with justice, spirituality, and art which I live for. BOTH newsletters are fantastic #TheOverview & #TheFrontline —
Quoted from Andrea Gibson's, “Homesick: A Plea For Our Planet”
None of this is poetry. It is just the earth
being who she is, in spite of us putting barcodes on the sea.
In spite of us acting like Edison invented daylight.Dawn presses her blushing face to my window,
asks me if I know the records in my record collection
look like the insides of trees. Yes, I say,
there is nothing you have ever grown that isn’t music.
You were the bamboo in Coltrane’s saxophone reed.
The mulberries that fed the silkworms
that made the slippers for the ballet.
The pine that built the loom that wove the hemp
for Frida Khalo’s canvas. The roses that dyed her paint
hoping her brush could bleed for her body.
This spoken word poem hits throughout - full text is accessible on their website
Poem from Caleb Parkin's chapbook, ‘This Fruiting Body'
I love this poem and I love this chapbook! Full of queer climate nods throughout. Here's more I love from Caleb Parkin:
Quoted from Adrienne Maree Brown, ‘touching the profound’
love is this humbled crawl
from dirtself to godself
stripped of masks and pontifications
i find no difference
ask anyone, love unveils it
we are divine cells of earthendless and special
i writhe in the soil
until a rhythm comes
i dance through the swampheat
oil spills rainbow my grief
burrow to the molten core of me
pounding the heart of everythingflame in our kiss
Love love love Adrienne Maree Brown's work! I've mentioned I'm working my way through her books. And here are some of her other poems from her blog I love:
Quoted from Tommy Pico, from chapbook ‘Feed’
The train stopped running. Interstate trucking, global air travel, containerized shipping left the hanging train hanging And even there, to have engines of appetites in a city in a state in a nation in a world in a solar system in a galaxy in a universe where the only constant is change—body roll with the punches and the punch lines and the I can’t stand the rains. Yes, our High Line stopped running, but it didn’t go away
Because you see dear reader, in the garden
dry foliage from the previous year’s growth gives its sugars
to the new generation. Helps protect
plants from desiccating and freezing in the winter.
Shelter for birds, hibernating
butterflies, and other insects.
Death cycle interwoven with the spring.
It took time to forget
about who we were together, so we could come back
with intention and not surrender
I'm a complete Tommy Pico stan, pure brilliance in any medium. Go read all Tommy's “Teebs” chapbooks (Feed, Junk, Nature Poem, & IRL) and also watch Reservation Dogs, a series Tommy screenwrites on for Hulu about indigenous teens in rural Oklahoma. Another I love:
Ocean Vuong's, ‘Seventh Circle of Earth’ (audio linked from On Being)
To say this hits home is an understatement, having grown up around Dallas, TX. Moves me to tears. The movement from the perverse tragedy to eternal beauty in this elegy feels… unreal. The title of course referencing Dante's Inferno, the seventh circle reserved for queers. How does he balance the weight of all this to such a moving degree? Ocean Vuong is a Genius, literal, figurative, Macarthur, every kind that exists. Here are more I love:
Story time: I saw Ocean Vuong at a poetry reading for his new book, ‘Time is a Mother' (it's so good!) early April. The entire event was a form of queer artistic transcendence and when turned towards the audience, connections interlaced further. Uplifting beyond. During one audience question, they called out they're also a Queer Asian-American Poet grateful for and inspire by Ocean's path, and their question went like: What do you see as the future of poetry? Ocean started by describing the past, what he had to go through, The Scene for poetry in the early aughts, and how there simply were not spaces that would publish a queer poet like him. All the doors were shut. The pages of the New Yorker were vastly different, really any “prestige” (read as, rich white audience-serving) Lit mag, would not place poems from queer people, much less people of color. The power in his past-painting was colored by the tension of a packed room, the fact that — the entire event space was filled with people to see him read his poems. His creativity and heart now command the Prestige outlets' taste and drive the Best Seller lists. So then with the room composed, he started to breakdown and cry. He said “my shame is that I did not imagine how good it could be. I never imagined what we could have.”
Ocean Voung in conversation with Kat Chow at 6th and I
Okay, so Ocean's brilliance was such that I have to tell you about one more audience question. Ocean's book, Time is a Mother, is written in the shadow of his mother's death. The interviewer, Kat Chow, also wrote a book about losing her mother. The final audience questioner started with a story, and wanted some specific advice. He said something like: he had lost his mom years ago. And the grief never goes. But what he finds challenging is that whenever friends bring up their moms, a Mothers Day thing, any opportunity to bring up his mother, the response always comes out of pity “Oh no, I'm so sorry” focused on the loss, which is used to close the conversation, and he's never asked the question “What was she like?” because THAT'S where his grief sits; not in feeling sorry for himself. Not in closing off. But in opening up her memory to share. So he wanted to understand if Ocean or Kat experienced this, and how they get through it, if they had the words to turn the conversation another way. Kat responded first: “I’m sorry for your loss” then her soft smile grew, turning it on him “Tell me, what was your mom like?” giving back the space to share and grieve in the way they wanted. After that, Ocean and Kat talked more about how to actually handle this. Ocean, getting to the heart of it: Western cultures suppresses every single little mention or sign or sight of Death--- yet we're all heading there. It's a form of power, of leadership, to be able to open up about your loss. To be vulnerable. Because once you do, you'll find your friends can identify, there will be someone they've lost, or something that you will teach them.
Anyway, go buy or get on the library lists for Time is a Mother. And stay thrilled for the rise of what even Ocean Vuong did not imagine: a thriving, queer poetic future. Now.
Alex Dimitrov, from ‘Love and Other Poems’— ‘Blue Marble' & ‘Pale Blue Dot’
I learned of Alex when his poem “Love” first which I love. Here's“ a few more of his published online I love:
Roy G Guzman, Queerodactyl (series)
Quoted from ‘Queerodactyl ('Spandex leggings authenticating my anaerobic')’
As twilight uncrowns the shade,
I howl effluvium, switchblade hue
to hue. I plié before the gas cloud lifting jumbo leaves.
Like a mythic infantry, the thirsty roaches begin to leatherflock.
More I love in the series:
Quoted from Jericho Brown's ‘The Riddle’
We do not know the history
Of this nation in ourselves. We
Do not know the history of our-
Selves on this planet because
We do not have to know what
We believe we own. We believe
We own your bodies but have no
Use for your tears. We destroy
The body that refuses use. We use
Maps we did not draw. We see
A sea so cross it. We see a moon
So land there. We love land so
Author of ‘The Tradition', winner of the 2019 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry. Jericho is so brilliant and so generous— I love his work. I've also picked up skills from him just waxing poetic lessons on Twitter threads. More online published poems I love:
Quoted from Aidan Aragon, grief is like an anglerfish
I don’t know how to explain
this to you: when walking
into my therapist’s office
my lips hook themselves
together and I don’t tell him:
my gender is like an ocean
roiling somewhere between
the things I tell myself and
the things I tell my mother:
More from Aidan Aragon I love:
There is always so much more. For queer community. Thank you, queer folks. Thank you, supporters/protectors. Thank you, writers. And thank you, readers. Thank you for being here. Thank you for loving queer people. — Adam Powers