Dear Body of Water

DEAR BODY OF WATER is a poetic water-harvesting project through mail-art to address bodies of water as fellow living beings on this Earth.

 

VISIT OUR NEW WEBSITE TO PARTICIPATE:

dearbodyofwater.poetsforscience.org.

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What body of water is dear to you?

What lake, river, ocean, creek, or aquifer supports your life on this planet?

We are all bodies of water.

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WILL YOU ADD YOUR VOICE TO THE CHORUS OF WATER?

DEAR BODY OF WATER recognizes bodies of water that we love (rivers, oceans, aquifers, creeks, ponds, and more) to join voices in a hopefully global chorus. Water is treated as an economic resource yet is animate and animating. How does water melt into our histories, memories, dreams, griefs, hopes & presence? What bodies of water are overlooked? More than water rights, can we consider rights of water? The act of addressing bodies of water as living beings (as in, DEAR BODY OF WATER) hopes to reframe water in the climate crisis (floods or droughts, rising sea levels or retreating lakes) less by fear than by care: growing communal interrelations. 

 

Wherever we are, the chance to hear personally about other bodies of water might grow collective care. Please share this invitation to add more voices to the mix.

 

SEND US A POSTCARD BY MAIL OR VIRTUALLY!

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TO PARTICIPATE:

• PICK UP & MAIL A POSTCARD at the UA Poetry Center in Tucson, AZ.​

• Live far away? Visit the project website for details how to participate, to become a tributary, to host a water party, & more! 

• ADD POSTAGE: When you mail your postcard.

• POST TO INSTAGRAM: Tag the #uapoetrycenter.

• BECOME A TRIBUTARY! Support this project by

participating, teaching, collaborating, postage, or outreach.

• Questions/contact? Email: dearbodyofwater[at]gmail[dot]com.

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Find water resources in your region!

For starters, from the UA Poetry Center, check out the Watershed Management Group, Water Resources Research Center, & more local water resources.

What supports for water exist near you?

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This collective call-and-response

started at Great Salt Lake (in Life in the Tar Seeps) and is watered from arroyos in the most biodiverse desert in North America and hopes to interconnect watersheds regionally, nationally, and internationally. 

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This project launched at the University of Arizona Poetry Center in August 2023 with my book launch for Life in the Tar Seeps (interrelating with my 2023-2024 community workshops on Relational Ecologies: Writing with a More-than-Human-World). The Poetry Center printed 6,000 postcards (pre-addressed to mail back) to join a collective poem. Our hope is to inspire more storytellers and listeners to the climate crisis to cultivate care for water & watersheds.

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To interconnect more bodies of water in October 2023, Dear Body of Water partnered with Kent State University's Wick Poetry Center to grow a participatory website, which launched in conjunction with the annual conference for the North American Association for Environmental Education and an exhibition on "Ways of Knowing, Ways of Being" at the Center for Creative Photography.

 

This is only the beginning of our work to interconnect bodies of water across the globe to cultivate care for the lifeblood of our planet. The human body is mostly water. The planet is mostly water. We are all bodies of water. 

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GRATITUDE to partners of DEAR BODY OF WATER: 

• Tyler Meier, Executive Director of the University of Arizona Poetry Center;

• David Hassler, Executive Director of Kent State University's Wick Poetry Center

• Each+Every | Traveling Stanzas Project

With gratitude to the TRIBUTARIES that have helped to grow DEAR BODY OF WATER: 

• National Association for Environmental Education

• Center for Creative Photography

• Montalvo Arts Center

• Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater

• Neltje Center for Excellence in Creativity and the Arts @ U of Wyoming

• More underway!

• Check out our growing map ~ more coming (and add your voice)!

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