Today is the first day of Kundiman’s annual Postcard Project with the Poetry Coalition! The Poetry Coalition is a national alliance made of more than 25 independent poetry organizations across the United States dedicated to working together to promote the value poets bring to our culture and lives. As a founding member of the Poetry Coalition, Kundiman presents programming on a theme of social importance each March. This year’s theme is “It is burning. / It is dreaming. / It is waking up.: Poetry & Environmental Justice.” The line of poetry is from Linda Hogan’s poem, “Map.”
This year’s Kundiman Postcard Project will involve weekly prompts, helpful links, and lots of writing! Kundiman Fellows will be mailing one another one postcard poem each day while meditating on the theme of poetry and environmental justice. We hope to create a sense of community in these difficult times through the sending and receiving of physical mail. Join us by writing your own postcard poems and sending them to your loved ones! If you send a photo of your postcard(s) to julia@kundiman.org or tweet us @kundimanforever, we’d love to feature your postcard on our social media and in our web archive. Make sure to use the Poetry Coalition hashtags #EnvironmentalJustice and #PoetryCoalition, as well as our hashtag #KundimanPostcards!
Check out the recap of last year’s Postcard Project and 2019’s Postcard Project.
Stay tuned for our weekly prompts, which we’ll tweet out and share so that you can follow along!
Week 1
Prompts:
What stands out to you as sacred in your corner of the world? If you can, take a walk around your neighborhood, and write down the first five things you notice. See how many of them you can fit into a poem!
Linda Hogan writes in "Map": "This is what I know from blood: / the first language is not our own." In the language that feels most like your own, think of two or three words that describe your favorite outdoor setting. Write a poem about how it feels to be in this setting and describe it using the words you thought of!
Environmental justice teaches us that all communities deserve equal protection from environmental harm. It's hard to not think of the power outage in Texas, and how mutual aid organizations have been providing vital support. What does mutual aid mean to you? How have you seen it in action in communities? Write a poem about a specific moment of aid and care.
Suggested reading & links:
The Principles of Environmental Justice, drafted by Delegates to the First National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit held in October, 1991.
To Survive Climate Catastrophe, Look to Queer and Disabled Folks by Patty Berne & Vanessa Raditz
A directory of mutual aid organizations in Texas. Please share, donate, and help however you can!
Week 2
Prompts:
Do you have a favorite love poem that you could rewrite, but to an element in nature? Craig Santos Perez's poem Love in a Time of Climate Change recycles Pablo Neruda's "Sonnet XVII". He writes, "I love you without knowing how or when this world / will end." What do you love, without knowing when this world will end?
When disaster comes, what do you imagine yourself doing? What will you miss the most? In "How to Let Go of the World" Franny Choi writes, "When disaster comes, some of us will stand on the rooftop to address the ghosts. / Some of us will hold the line." Write a poem that describes what would be most important to you, if the world were to end!
What changes would make the planet more sustainable? If you could change anything about the world as it is right now, what would you change? Pick one example (place, person, idea) and write about how that change would show up in the world around you.
Suggested reading & links:
Unequal Impact: The Deep Links Between Racism and Climate Change, an interview with climate activist Elizabeth Yeampierre.
Here is a linocut art print by organizer/activist Annie Morgan Banks to inspire some drawings, if you're so inclined!
WEEK 3
Prompts:
How can we practice mindfulness and care in the face of environmental change? Fatimah Asghar writes in I Don’t Know What Will Kill Us First: The Race War or What We've Done to the Earth, "behind / your head a butterfly rests on a tree; it’s been / there our whole conversation". Write a poem about the spaces and moments that offer you a sense of stillness and peace.
Imagine an animal visits you while out in nature—where would it take you? Jane Wong writes in This is What Survival Looks Like, "What if I had / climbed up there with them, my striped / tail a broom sweeping rage clean?" Write a poem about this encounter!
If you could speak to your ancestors about their relationship with nature, what would they share with you? What might you want to ask them? Write a poem about what this conversation might look like.
suggested reading & links:
Decolonizing Environmentalism by Jazmin Murphy
These soothing watercolor paintings from Satsuki Shibuya might inspire your own abstract art!
Week 4
Prompts:
Write a poem that dreams of a world where climate change has been solved, or healed. What does this world look like? Who is responsible for the healing?
If humans had to move to another planet to survive, what world would we migrate to? What animals, plants, or creatures would we find there? What systems would we live in?
Use this line from Li-Young Lee to begin your postcard poem, "From blossoms comes—". What do flower blossoms create for you? Seeds, fruits—maybe a memory, or an emotion?
Lee writes, "From blossoms comes / this brown paper bag of peaches...There are days we live / as if death were nowhere / in the background; from joy / to joy to joy, / from wing to wing, / from blossom to blossom to / impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom."
Suggested reading & links:
"Redshift and Portalmetal," by micha cárdenas, an electronic literature piece that uses space travel to look at the experience of migration for a trans woman of color—shared by Ching-In Chen.
Radical and hopeful art by Chiara Acu.
Week 5
Prompt:
Where is your absolute favorite place in the world? Imagine yourself walking through a doorway that magically transports you to this place—what do you feel when you are there? Who do you wish could be there with you? Why is this your favorite place? Write a poem that describes two specific elements in this environment and why they are important to you!