Writing the Land
HOT OFF THE PRESS!
This year’s Writing the Land anthology is in print and includes a chapter dedicated to Cold Hollow to Canada.
Writing the Land is a project that pairs poets with protected lands to draw inspiration and create work from, tapping into the creative spirit that flows from our connection to the natural world. This collaborative effort among Writing the Land, conservation groups, landowners, and writers has resulted in 14 anthologies representing over 150 conservation organizations and 350 poets.
This year’s anthology includes the story of 10 different conservation groups working across north America highlighted by poems inspired by conserved forests, parks, farms, rivers, and historical sites each group helped protect. CHC is honored to be a part of this year’s anthology that involved two longtime CHC woodlot members who conserved their land through Vermont Land Trust, Claudia & Lew Rose and Cherly & Ward Heneveld, and who welcomed two local poets with strong ties to CHC and our landscape. This includes longtime CHC woodlots member and Vermont’s reigning poetry slam champion, Geof Hewitt, along with Amy Heneveld, daughter of Cheryl and Ward, who brings deep connection to her family’s land through her perspective as a writer.
Geof Hewitt, one of the contributing poets to Horizon's, shared a few sentences regarding his experience with the land, meeting and collaborating with the Rose's, and his creative process:
"Claudia and Lew Rose's invitation to visit and their generosity with their time, their patience with my questions, and an hour alone at one of the prime spots in their woods gave me the 'bones' of the three poems I wrote in celebration of their land. Information gathering was critical, and getting a true feel of their place on earth made all the difference, but the real work was honing my observations in the months following my visits with them."
Geof Hewitt, is the author of 4 books of poems and is Vermont's reigning poetry slam champion. He is a retired teacher and language arts consultant for the Vermont Agency of Education, and presently lives in Calais, where he offers readings of his poems, serves as slammaster/host for school and community-wide poetry slams, and leads writing workshops for all ages above third grade.
Other conservation organizations whose work and land inspired poems within the collection are:
- Agrarian Trust (Nationwide)
- Kittitas Conservation Trust (Washington)
- Edmonton & Area Land Trust (Alberta, Canada)
- Southern Wisconsin Bird Alliance (Wisconsin)
- Little Traverse Conservancy (Michigan)
- Cold Hollow to Canada (Vermont)
- Castle in the Clouds (New Hampshire)
- Whittier Birthplace (Massachusetts)
- Newtown Forest Association (Connecticut)
- Dumbarton Oaks Park Conservancy (DC)
CHC will have copies available for in-person purchase at upcoming events, including the Summer Social and the Fall Annual Gathering. Featured poets Geoff Hewitt and Amy Heneveld will be giving a live reading of their submissions at the Summer Social on July 23rd.
Praise for Writing the Land
Writing the Land is a vital project that asks through the language of poetry the most important question that faces us in these cataclysmic times: who are we without the land and the more-than-human kin it nourishes, who nourish us in return? Each anthology contains poems that expose the lie of separation between human and nature, and returns us to the reality that even when trapped amongst pavement and concrete, we are but seedlings and genetic cousins to trees, plants, stones, and mycelia. To know ourselves, we must know the land. —Angela Maria Spring, poet, journalist, and owner of Duende District, a pop-up bookstore project for and by people of color, where all are welcome.