Ambitions for the Future of Climate

In the wake of this summer’s Canadian wildfires, protesters are descending on Climate Week NYC, which includes today’s United Nations Climate Ambition Summit. Although the spotlight on climate change has gotten a lot brighter in the past several months, the issue has been going on for decades. Three works have come out recently that were all conceived before this summer’s alarming weather but seem even more relevant now. All three artists have some connection to Talking Writing, and I decided that making a collage of their works and interviewing them would be a great way to explore these themes through the lens of aesthetics. JoeAnn Hart has just released a book of short stories set in the near future called Highwire Act and Other Tales of Survival, which won the 2022 Hudson Prize. In April 2023, Alice Major put out Knife on Snow, a collection of poems that weaves together emotional considerations of climate change with science, mythology, space exploration, and daily life. And in March, 2023 John Atkinson released his solo album Energy Fields, created from field recordings of coal mines, turbines, refineries, and animals from his residency at the Ucross Foundation in Wyoming in 2019.