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By Simmons Buntin, October 16, 2011 11:01 am

Oregon's Blue River. Photo by W.F. Gates.

The Blue River Declaration: An Ethic of the Earth is a statement of environmental ethics put forward by the Blue River Quorum, which met in October in the ancient forests of the Blue River watershed in Oregon. Participants include Alison Hawthorne Deming, Jennifer Michael Hecht, Kathleen Dean Moore, Michel P. Nelson, Fred Swanson, and many others. The Quorum was convened by the Spring Creek Project for Ideas, Nature, and the Written Word, with funding from the Shotpouch Foundation, the Oregon Council for the Humanities, and the U.S. Forest Service.

The Blue River Declaration begins:

A truly adaptive civilization will align its ethics with the ways of the Earth. A civilization that ignores the deep constraints of its world will find itself in exactly the situation we face now, on the threshold of making the planet inhospitable to humankind and other species. The questions of our time are thus: What is our best current understanding of the nature of the world? What does that understanding tell us about how we might create a concordance between ecological and moral principles, and thus imagine an ethic that is of, rather than against, the Earth?

What is the world?

In our time, science, religious traditions, Earth’s many cultures, and artistic insights are all converging on a shared understanding of the nature of the world: The Earth is our home. It will always be our only source of shelter, sustenance, and inspiration. There is no other place for us to go.
The Earth is part of the creative unfolding of the universe. From the raw materials of the stars, life sprang forth and radiated into species after species, including human beings. The human species is richly varied, with a multitude of persons, cultures, and histories. We humans are kin to one another and to all the other beings on the planet; we share common ancestors and common substance, and we will share a common fate. Like humans, other beings are not merely commodities or service-providers, but have their own intelligence, agency, and urging toward life.

Read the full Blue River Declaration at www.alisonhawthornedeming.com/docs/events/TheBlueRiverEthic_Nov2011.pdf.

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By Simmons Buntin, August 30, 2011 10:32 pm

The editors of Terrain.org: A Journal of the Built & Natural Environments are pleased to announce the winners and finalists in our 2nd Annual Contest:

Poetry
Judged by Alison Hawthorne Deming

• Winner – Rebecca Dunham for her poem in seven parts, “Morning: Joplin, MO”
• Finalist – Desmond Kon Zhicheng-Mingdé for his poem “Scholem in Forty Winged Hours”
• Finalist – Gretchen Primack for her poem “Fawn”

Of the winning poem, Alison Hawthorne Deming writes:

This poem sequence takes up the task of beginning again after the disaster of tornado and flood that hit Joplin, MO earlier this year.  Beginning requires seeing and the poem accomplishes that with acute precision and urgency as it ricochets between observation and the inward seeing of contemplation. I admire the poem’s economy and questioning in taking on the particulars of a tragedy that wounded human, plant, and creaturely communities alike. But I admire even more that the poem makes no attempt to make it all better with simplistic pieties. Rather it asks the reader to make a home in this reality–”roost, thou forsaken”– and to “let the pain remind you/ what it means to survive.”  In a world of wounds, one of poetry’s great tasks is to educate our empathy. This poem does just that at a time when empathy needs all the help it can get in the world.

Fiction
Judged by Andrew Wingfield

• Winner – G.E. Tallant for her story “Song of the Turkey Vulture”
• Finalist – Malka Davis for her story “Kenley’s Watch”
• Finalist – Erica Olsen for her story “Driveaway”
• Finalist – K.L. Barron for her story “Controlled Burn”

Of the winning story, Andrew Wingfield writes:

“Song of the Turkey Vulture” is a prose elegy to the deeply placed existence of a single woman whose small farm is the great work of her life.  Rich in details of the land and its bounty, tuned to seasonal rhythms of work and weather, this story grew up around me with the quiet majesty of a pumpkin vine.  As our small farms devolve into housing tracts, or fall prey to the factory food system, we squander not only good land, but also the habits of care that are the essence of agriculture.  Through its sharp characterizations and careful evocations of place—the sheer weight of its specifics—“Song of the Turkey Vulture” invites us to feel the gravity of our loss.  The story is mournful yet celebratory, suffused with wry humor and laced with a bitterness that’s as bracing as a mouthful of mustard greens.

Nonfiction
Judged by Elizabeth Dodd

• Winner – Julian Hoffman for his essay “Faith in a Forgotten Place”
• Finalist – Katie Fallon for her essay “Hill of the Sacred Eagles”
• Finalist – Catherine Schmitt for her essay “New Orleans, The Gulf Coast, 2010″

Of the winning essay, Elizabeth Dodd writes:

I’ve selected “Faith in a Forgotten Place” as winner of this year’s nonfiction contest.  This piece combines terrific reporting—repeated visits to the village of Zagradec, careful inclusion of historic context—with an evocative personal response, indicating how the Prespa basin has touched the author.  “And while most of Lesser Prespa Lake exists in Greece, the great bowl of open water throws an unexpected arm around an oak-clad mountain at its southern end. The hill-slopes close in, like parallel lines running together in the distance, until only a thin finger of water touches the shore, a reed-tangled wedge belonging to Albania.” This faithful presentation of the world’s body underlies the essay’s contemplation of hopes and borders, and how eco-tourism can be an opportunity for re-inhabitation by those who are not the tourists.  Richly informative, deftly reflective, this is splendid literary journalism.

All of the winners and finalists will be published in our forthcoming issue–No. 28, “Image”–which will launch on September 19th. Additionally, winners each receive a $250 prize.

Congratulations to our winners!

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By Simmons Buntin, January 20, 2011 11:35 pm

The largest conference for writers and publishers is just around the corner, and we hope you’ll join us in Washington, D.C. at one of the following events!

The Association of Writers and Writing Programs
Annual Conference and Bookfair
Washington, D.C. : February 2-5, 2011

Terrain.org / Hawk & Handsaw Booth at Bookfair
Booth 509

Meet Terrain.org editors Simmons Buntin, Joshua Foster, and Patrick Burns, as well as Hawk & Handsaw editor and Terrain.org editorial board member Kathryn Miles, and learn more about these award-winning journals that focus on culture, environment, and sustainability.

Panel
Recovery as Discovery: Rethinking Nature Writing

• Thursday, February 3 : 1:30 – 2:45 p.m.
• Palladian Ballroom, Omni Shoreham
• Terrain.org editorial board member Alison Hawthorne Deming joins Tom Montgomery-Fate, David Gessner, Gretchen Legler, John Price, and Kathleen Dean Moore

Panel
What Do Writers Do All Day? Articulating Our Work in the Profession

• Thursday, February 3 : 1:30 – 2:45 p.m.
• Coolidge, Marriott Wardman Park
• Terrain.org editorial board member Kathryn Miles joins James Engelhardt, Stephanie Vanderslice, Christine Stewart-Nunez, and J.D. Schraffenberger

Panel
The Colors of Nature: Culture, Identity, and the Natural World

• Thursday, February 3 : 4:30-5:45 p.m.
• Hampton Boardroom, Omni Shoreham
• Terrain.org editorial board member Lauret Savoy joins Elmaz Abinader, Faith Adiele, Fred Arroyo, Debra Kang Dean, and Nikky Finney

Panel
Who Makes the Best Student? Growing Your Program with Nontraditional Majors

• Friday, February 4 : Noon – 1:15 p.m.
• Coolidge, Marriott Wardman Park
• Terrain.org editor-in-chief Simmons Buntin joins Patricia Clark, Sean Prentiss, and Joe Wilkins

Panel
The Language of Conservation, sponsored by Poets House

• Friday, February 4 : 1:30 – 2:45 p.m.
• Regency Ballroom, Omni Shoreham
• Terrain.org editorial board member Alison Hawthorne Deming joins Mark Doty, Sandra Alcosser, Joseph Bruchac, and Pattiann Rogers

Panel
Environmental Writing in the Age of Global Climate Change, sponsored by the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment

• Friday, February 4 : 3 – 4:15 p.m.
• Virginia C, Marriott Wardman Park
• Terrain.org editor-in-chief Simmons Buntin joins Terrain.org editorial board member Kathryn Miles, plus Sheryl St. Germain, Paul Bogard, and Janine DeBaise

Reading
Salmon Poetry 30th Anniversary Reading and Book Launch

• Friday, February 4 : 8 – 10 p.m.
• Pigment Art Studio
  1848 Columbia Road Northwest
  Washington, D.C
• Terrain.org editor-in-chief Simmons Buntin joins fellow Salmon poets Andrea Cohen, Allan Peterson, Kevin Higgins, Susan Millar DuMars, Alan Jude Moore, Patrick Chapman, Drucilla Wall, Eamonn Wall, Mike Begnal, Patrick Hicks, Stephen Powers, Drew Blanchard, Philip Fried, and John Fitzgerald; hosted by Terrain.org editorial board member and Salmon Poetry publisher Jessie Lendennie

Book Signing
Bloom, by Simmons B. Buntin

• Friday, February 4 : 10 – 11 a.m.
• Bookfair, Salmon Poetry Table, E26

~~~

Check back, as we’ll add and update events as we learn about them!

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By Simmons Buntin, October 14, 2010 12:53 am

The editors of Terrain.org: A Journal of the Built & Natural Environments are pleased to announce the launch of our 26^th issue, “The Signal in the Noise,” at http://www.terrain.org.

Issue No. 26 features a rich mix of literary and technical contributions, including the poetry, fiction, and nonfiction winners of our inaugural contest, the new “To Know a Place” feature, and more:

Editorials

• Guest Editorial: “To Re-imagine the Place of Humans in the Natural World” by Kathleen Dean Moore, Founding Director, The Spring Creek Project for Ideas, Nature, and the Written Word
• The Literal Landscape: “Dirty Words on Mount St. Helens” with Photo Gallery by Simmons B. Buntin
• Plein Air: “Open Book, Field, Mind: Life Lessons Learned in Minneapollis” by Deborah Fries
• Bull Hill: “The WhaleKit Machine: On Tour with the Karelian Magicians of Glitch” by David Rothenberg
• A Stone’s Throw: “Bedrock: Coming to a Language of Earth” by Lauret Savoy

Interview

• “A More Encompassing View of Human Flourishing” Terrain.org Interviews Author Alison Hawthorne Deming

To Know a Place

• “Setnet Fishing in Uyak Bay” Essay and Photographs by Sara Loewen, with Audio

UnSprawl Case Study

• MetroGreen Regional Greenway System in Kansas City, by Kendra Briechle and courtesy The Conservation Fund

Essays

• “Sinuous” by Elizabeth Dodd, 2010 Nonfiction Contest Winner
• “Kinds of Quiet” by Michael Palmer, 2010 Nonfiction Contest Finalist
• “Signal: Notes on the Desert” A Photo Essay with Prose by Gregory McNamee and Photography by Stephen Strom
• “Silent Hills” by Russ J. Van Paepeghem
• “Scope: Ten Small Essays” by John R. Campbell, with Photographs

Articles

• “Permaculture: Applying Ecology at Home” A Narrative Slideshow by Jolie Kaytes and Paul Charpentier
• “The Bard’s Bird or The Slings and Arrows of Avicultural Hegemony: A Tragicomedy in Five Acts” by Charles Mitchell
• “Fire Season: The Policies of Identity and Suppression in the Burning Forests of the American West” by Bernard Quetchenbach
• “Walking to Work: Bringing Employment Centers Back to Neighborhoods” by Jay Hoekstra

ARTerrain Gallery

• “Sonic Antarctica” Digital, Tactile, and Acoustic Art from an Antarctica Excursion by Andrea Polli

Poetry

• Laura-Gray Street : One Poem in Fifteen Parts with Audio : 2010 Poetry Contest Winner
• Reeves Keyworth : One Poem with Audio : 2010 Poetry Contest Finalist
• Sara Talpos : Three Poems with Audio : 2010 Poetry Contest Finalist
• Julie Hanson : Two Poems with Audio : 2010 Poetry Contest Finalist
• Tom Daley : Three Poems with Audio : 2010 Poetry Contest Finalist
• Davi Walders : Two Poems with Audio : 2010 Poetry Contest Finalist
• Ben Howard : Two Poems with Audio
• Cynthia Huntington : Three Poems
• Derek Sheffield : Five Poems with Audio
• Laurie Klein : One Poem with Audio
• Mary Cisper : One Poem with Audio
• Jason Myers : Two Poems with Audio
• E. Louise Beach : Three Poems with Audio
• Emily Wall : Three Poems with Audio
• Jeff Newberry : One Poem with Audio
• Nick Ripatrazone : Five Poems with Audio
• Sherry O’Keefe : Two Poems with Audio
• Eric Paul Shaffer : One Poem with Audio
• Jeffrey Thomson : Two Poems with Audio
• Francis Raven : One Poem with Audio
• Nickolas Butler : One Poem
• Paula Sergi : Two Poems
• Janine DeBaise : One Poem

Fiction

• “Right of Way” by Andrew Wingfield, 2010 Fiction Contest Winner
• “Into the Lake” by Kevin Catalano, 2010 Fiction Contest Finalist
• “Wet Paper Grass” by Jasmon Drain, 2010 Fiction Contest Finalist
• “Precarious Things” by Debbie Weingarten
• “The Antarctic” Story and Photographs by Lucy Jane Bledsoe
• “Tracking Fire” by Frances Kerridge

Reviews

• “The Hard and the Sweet”: Wendy Burk Reviews Girl on a Bridge, Poems by Suzanne Frischkorn
• “Close to Home”: Julie Wnuk Reviews The Circumference of Home: One Man’s Quest for a Radically Local Life, by Kurt Hoelting
• “A Desert Urchin”: Andrew C. Gottlieb Reviews Urchin to Follow, Poems by Dorine Jennette
• “A Girl and Her Dog Consider the Storm”: Jennifer McStotts Reviews The Encyclopedia of Weather and Climate Change: A Complete Visual Guide, by Juliane L. Fry, Hans-F Graf, Richard Grotjahn, Marilyn Raphael, Clive Saunders, and Richard Whitaker

View our dynamic new issue at http://www.terrain.org.

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By Simmons Buntin, February 1, 2010 8:43 pm

Join Terrain.org editorial board member Alison Hawthorne Deming and other authors at the Friends of the Patagonia Library Writers’ Round-up 2010: Saturday, February 13, 2010 from 10.00 a.m. – 3.30 p.m. at Cady Hall in Patagonia, Arizona.

Scheduled writers include Mark Bahti, Betty Barr, Byrd Baylor, Elizabeth Bernays, Joel Bernstein, J.P.S. Brown, Stephen Cox, Philip Caputo, Alison Hawthorne Deming, Elizabeth Gunn, Lynn Hassler, Juanita Havill, Mike Hayes, Fenton Johnson, Ken Lamberton, Susan Lowell, Gregory McNamee, Tom Miller, Gary Paul Nabhan, Margaret Regan, Richard Shelton, Stephen Strom, and Janet Winans.

For more information, visit http://www.patagoniapubliclibrary.org/?p=874.

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By Simmons Buntin, January 6, 2010 6:03 am

Terrain.org: A Journal of the Built & Natural Environments is pleased to welcome four new Editorial Board members:

• Alison Hawthorne Deming
• Erik Hoffner
• William Keener
• Kathryn Miles

They join the following dynamic mix of existing Editorial Board members:

• Scott Calhoun
• Miriam Marty Clark
• Rick Cole
• Carolyn Dooling
• Deborah Fries
• Jessie Lendennie
• Rich Michal
• David Rothenberg
• Lauret Savoy
• David Wann
• Todd Ziebarth

Additionally, Terrain.org’s editors are:

• Simmons B. Buntin, Editor and Publisher
• Stephanie Eve Boone, Reviews Editor
• Patrick Burns, Fiction Editor
• Catherine Cunningham, Editor
• Joshua Foster, Nonfiction Editor

New Board Member Bios

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By Simmons Buntin, November 25, 2009 7:58 pm

Rope
by Alison Hawthorne Deming
Penguin Poets (Penguin Books), 2009

From the publisher:

Alison Hawthorne Deming’s fourth collection of poems follows the paths of imagination into meditations on salt, love, Hurricane Katrina, Greek myth, an experimental forest, and the search for extraterrestrial life. These disparate interests are linked by the poet’s faith in art as an instrument for creating meaning, beauty, and continuity — virtues diminished by the velocity and violence of our historical moment. The final long poem, “The Flight,” inspired by the inclusive poems of A.R. Ammons, is a 21st century epic poised on the verge or our discovering life beyond Earth.

Quoth Christopher Cokinos, editor of Isotope and writer of poetry and prose:

“Alison Deming seems in this book like a poetic delta in which run the rivers of Walt Whitman, Muriel Rukeyser, May Swenson, and Frank O’Hara. This book pitches into chant, slides into talk, candles the self and finds the solitary paths we’re all on. ‘Mercy was a skill my hands would have to learn,’ she says — and poetry this fine is a form of mercy too, I think, an act of compassion, a gift.”

Sample poems (with audio):

Read (and listen to Alison Deming read) three poems from Rope also in the current issue of Terrain.org:

“Pandora on Prozac”
“Specimens Collected at the Clearcut”
“Glooscap in Wolfville”

Terrain.org micro review:

As the old adage goes, we live in interesting times — we always do, of course, and yet doesn’t it seem that with technology’s exponential growth, global climate change, globalization in general, and the profusion of literature and art that in fact we do live in the most interesting of times?  Literature and art, in fact, may be the best indicators, and if so, then Alison Deming’s newest collection of poems, Rope, is a bellwether.

Rope not only brings together an amazing array of topics — the publisher’s summary above points those out — but weaves those topics into politics, passion, and perspective wholly uniqe and yet universal. Folks who have read Deming’s poetry (or prose) know of her curiosity for and allegiance to the workings of our natural world, and beyond. What makes Rope so delightful, and so important, is how Deming crafts that curiosity: there’s both caution and candor, verve and nuance — always elegant, often pointed.

I think this is particularly true with Deming’s longer poems — “Definition of Disaster,” which takes a sort of artist/scientist systems approach to the after-effects of Hurricane Katrina; “The Andrews Forest Quintet,” a series of five poems written while at the H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest; and perhaps most surprisingly (and stunningly) “Works and Days,” a 45-part prose poem that ranges as only a true artist’s mind can.

The worry with such a far-ranging collection is that it could come across as scattershot — too much of everything, not enough of anything. But that’s not the case with Rope, because even the shorter poems fit like a cog into the larger system of the book. And the longer poems help bound the overall set, so that reading Rope is like following a pathway that meanders but maintains direction. The direction is not just forward but up — the mountains, the sky, the stars.

If we live in interesting times — and we certainly do — then Rope is a worthy and essential guide.

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By Simmons Buntin, November 18, 2009 5:50 pm

Yesterday I had the privelage of having lunch with Bill Keener, a senior attorney with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency focusing on borderland issues. He was down in Tucson from San Francisco. Bill, writing as William Keener, has three poems in the current issue of Terrain.org that you shouldn’t miss: read and listen to them here.

We were hoping that Alison Hawthorne Deming, who also has poems in this issue, would be able to join us.  But alas, she couldn’t make it. I think they’d get along splendidly — they have a lot in common. And that strikes me as true of many poets who likewise write of science and environment. What is it that draws us together? Ideology, passion, scientific understanding, constant pursuit of truth and justice, a love for art and an acknowledgement that art and science are fundamentally linked? That’s why Terrain.org resounds, I think. It’s about nexus. In this case, the nexus between art and science, environment and humanity — the places real and virtual we all coexist, even if we don’t completely understand them.

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By Simmons Buntin, June 28, 2007 5:05 am

Simmons Buntin, editor and publisher of Terrain.org: A Journal of the Built & Natural Environments, will moderate a panel titled “The Future of Environmental Essay” at the 2008 AWP Conference in New York City, January 30 to February 2. Terrain.org will also have a table at the Bookfair.

The panel features writers/editors/teachers/scientists Alison Hawthorne Deming, David Gessner, David Rothenberg, and Lauret Savoy.

Panel Description:

Global warming, urbanization, deforestation—these are only a few of the global dilemmas that environmental writing attempts to tackle. Historically, environmental essay—beginning with writers like Aldo Leopold and Rachel Carson—has taken a place-based, often spiritual approach to environmental issues. But what does the future of the environmental essay hold? Four prominent creative nonfiction writers and editors will provide insight, exploring environmental essay as both craft and motive.

If you’re at the AWP Conference, please plan to join us for what promises to be an exceptional panel.