The Personal Impacts of Climate Change: A Poem About Intimacy

“Nature is no longer the rustic retreat of the Wordsworthian poet. … [it] is now a pressing political question, a question of survival.” (Jay Parini, Poems for a Small Planet: Contemporary American Nature Poetry)

I’m going to do something a bit unorthodox in this post. I’m going to share with you the unedited (pre-publication) draft of a poem that I just had published. I’m also going to read that original version for you in audio.

My poem “Climate Change Is a Poem” appears in the latest issue of Reckoning Magazine, a nonprofit, annual journal of creative writing on environmental justice. You can read the final published version there.

I teach a class on nature poetry, and in that class, I often encourage students to direct their work not just to the larger problems associated with climate change, but also how climate change impacts people on a personal level. The goal is to get students to write from a more authentic place: One which acknowledges the human loss associated with climate change and how important identity is to our experience of this fading world.