A Poem and Video for Earth Day
A short and sweet hello this week. I haven’t done much since I finished the semester. Been reading a lot, rewatched Sense & Sensibility (1995), and became briefly obsessed with sautéed mushrooms on sourdough toast for breakfast. And of course, I took the entirety of Friday to listen to The Tortured Poets Department and the anthology songs. I really like the songs Aaron Dessner worked on, and that’s about all I’ll add to the discourse right now.
Tomorrow is Earth Day and I wanted to share a couple earth-inspired pieces of mine from over the years. The ecological crisis we are living through has been one of the few reliable and constant sources of anxiety throughout my entire life, and I might say, the lives of all people my age. We have grown up with this looming prophecy that the world is going to end, or at least, the world as we know it. This past school year, when digging through old notebooks and memories for something to write about, I kept coming back to a few memories from my childhood. I used to have a big ecology encyclopedia that I remember being obsessed with in 3rd grade. In 2nd grade my big concern was for the Amazon Rainforest. By 3rd grade it was the Great Barrier Reef. I remember writing an essay about the coral dying. All of these memories are going into a personal essay I’m just starting, so I’ll share some finished work for now:
This poem is, as of right now, untitled; in my head I refer to it as my “linger” poem. It was one of the last poems I wrote in Richmond before graduation. I had the first two lines rolling around my head for a few weeks before the poem fully took its shape. I finished it sometime in April, a year ago. It was one of the poems I included in my portfolio when applying to grad school.
I posted this video to Youtube and Instagram a few years ago. Mind you, I made this before I had taken any film production classes in college, before I really learned anything about editing or filming. I was in high school and felt like my fears about the world were just being thrown out into the void.
What I’m Reading: Ordinary Wonder Tales by Emily Urquhart, Weyward by Emilia Hart
What I’m Listening To: what I have to say (EP) by Faith Zapata, “Elbows” by Hannah Lou Clark (very happy to have some new music from her!), “White Cliffs Of Dover” by Florence + The Machine
What I’m Watching: I just rewatched Captain America: The First Avenger (2011) for the first time in years. It was one of my favorites growing up.
