A new poetry anthology from Kent State University was in jeopardy after federal funding cuts earlier this year. Yet the Wick Poetry Center forged ahead and this week releases, "The Nature of Our Times," blending art and science.
It's a companion to United by Nature, which brings together ecologists, biologists and zoologists to create the first-ever assessment of America’s lands, waterways and wildlife. Their work started in 2022 under President Joe Biden as the National Nature Assessment (NNA1).
“When the current administration shifted priorities and discontinued the work on the NNA1, the director of that assessment, Dr. Phil Levin, was let go,” said David Hassler, executive director of KSU’s Wick Poetry Center.
Levin, lead scientist at the Nature Conservancy, reorganized the group of more than 200 scientists from around the country, secured funding and continued the work. Hassler and his colleagues, including poet Jane Hirschfield, continued their work as well. Hassler called it “poetry in the service of science [and] communication.”
“I like to think of poems as … helping with what many people legitimately say is a real crisis in science communication,” he said. “How do we communicate this scientific report and actually feel the impact of it? And then take that feeling and move toward action.”
Hassler cited a Hirschfield quote as his mantra for the project.
“She says poetry and science are not opposites, but allies. And the microscope and the metaphor are both instruments of discovery,” Hassler said. “What poetry does so well is to ‘think the world together’ in a sense. Which is what metaphor does ... It's building a bridge between one thing and another.”
Hassler, Hirschfield and Wick colleagues Jessica Jewell and Charles Malone put out their call for poems in 2024. About 1,300 of them, and counting, now reside on the Poets for Science website. More than 200 poems – including 12 by Northeast Ohioans - are in the new book.
“We have poems from scientists who have never published a poem,” Hassler said. “We have poems from high school students, from teachers, from environmental activists who don't think of themselves as poets alongside Arthur Sze and Camille Dungy and Jane Hirschfield and Naomi Shihab Nye. So, the contributors’ bio section at the end is really interesting to read.”
Hassler and his team will host Dr. Levin and several of the poets in Kent State’s ballroom on Thursday night. On Friday, at the Downtown Cleveland Public Library’s main branch, they’re unveiling an exhibit that marries verse with nature photography. Hassler hopes to create a similar traveling exhibit in the future that will also incorporate elements of the finished United by Nature report.
