Episode 8 – Writing the Climate Crisis – The Wreck of Time and Environmental Poetry

listen on Spotify / Apple / Anchor / scroll down for our podcast player!

World Is Burning, book club edition. We talk about reading to ease climate anxiety, how art helps us process complicated emotions, and coming back to your favorite work over the years. 

We read from The Wreck of Time by Annie Dillard as well as poetry by Wumen Huikai, Nnimmo Bassey, Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner, and Mikko Harvey.

But first, we discussed climate anxiety as defined by the American Psychological Association as “a chronic fear of environmental doom.”

We also talked about the growing number of artists using their creative skills to talk about the climate crisis, including Creative Action Network’s Green New Deal Poster Book that benefits the Sunrise Movement.

Story #1: The Wreck of Time by Annie Dillard (Elise)

Sources:

The Wreck of Time by Annie Dillard (PDF of essay / buy For The Time Being)

Brain Pickings, Annie Dillard on Choosing Presence Over Productivity
Wikipedia on the 1991 Cyclone in Bangladesh

Olivia mentioned the “calm” website, which is Pixel Thoughts’ 60-Second Meditation Tool.

Story #2: Environmental Poetry (Olivia)

Poems:
Wumen Huikai, Translation 1, Translation 2
Nnimmo Bassey, I Will Not Dance to Your Beat and When the Earth Bleeds
Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner, Dear Matafele Peinam (poem and UN Climate Summit video)
Mikko Harvey, The Poem Grace Interrupted

Other climate poetry collections to check out:
Poets.org, Poems About Climate Change
The Guardian, Keep It In the Ground: A Poem a Day
The Poetry Foundation, Poetry and the Environment (especially ‘Anthracite Country’ by Jay Parini)
Chicago Review of Books, 10 Poems About Climate Change to Read Right Now
The RSA, 9 Original Poems on Climate Change 

Other sources:
Lapham’s Quarterly, Wumen Huikai
CMS Impact, Fair Use in Poetry

We briefly mentioned the activist Vanessa Nakate and her posters that read “We cannot eat coal, we cannot drink oil.“

The Dump

We are so obsessed with Jon Bois and SB Nation’s 17776 that we are recommending the sequel, 20020, before we’ve even read it.

Elise has been enjoyed the podcast Clothes Horse about demystifying the fashion industry. They have an episode on vegan leather that is a good companion to our last episode!

Our World is Burning themed playlist is on Spotify.

You can keep up with us on Twitter and Instagram.

If you enjoyed this episode, considering reviewing us on Apple Podcasts and downloading/subscribing/following wherever you like to do those things. It helps us immensely.

Thanks for listening!

Ep. 82 – Cheese Caves and Banana Republics – World Is Burning

We’re digging into America’s deepest darkest secrets — when it comes to food, that is. Elise tells us how one president’s cheese became the next president’s problem, which might lead you to Google “American government 1.4 billion pounds of cheese in caves.” We explore how the cheese caves of yesteryear became the weird milk ads of our present. Then Olivia gives us a brief history of bananas, which involves quite a lot of railroad tycoons, bare minimum union demands, and good old American capitalism. Plus, our theory as to why slipping on banana peels was more common a century ago, and our next book club pick. Subscribe/follow/press the button to keep up with new episodes every Wednesday! You can also follow us @worldisburnin on Instagram and Twitter, and check out our website worldisburning.com for extended show notes including sources and photos. World Is Burning is hosted by Olivia Hamilton and Elise Nye. Our theme music is by Kaycie Satterfield, and our logo was made by Sonja Katanic.

1. Ep. 82 – Cheese Caves and Banana Republics 01:10:23
2. Ep. 81 – Navigating Anger & Disinformation in Times of Conflict 01:16:42
3. Ep. 80 – Something in the Water – Hurricane Sandy & Flint Michigan 01:12:13
4. Ep. 79 – Disability & Climate: Greyhound fights the ADA and Lyme Disease 01:26:05
5. Ep. 78 – Labor & Leisure – The First Strike & A Depression-Era Prediction 01:29:24