Ecopoetics After 3.11

Discussing ecopoetry in the East Bay Hills with Robert Hass, Brenda Hillman, Ryoichi Wago and Ayako Takahashi

Ayako and I are working on a volume of translations on ecopoetry in Japan after 3.11 (the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami the led to the nuclear meltdown). In our interview with Brenda Hillman and Wago Ryoichi we discussed activism, catastrophe and how poetry can help us engage with what feels insurmountable. Ayako had careful notes on ecopoetry from Anne Fisher-Worth’s volume and elsewhere. She asked about definitions of ecopoetry and Hillman offered ecopoetry as ‘worried nature poetry’. We’ll spend the winter working on the translating the poems.