As the season turns from summer to fall, it's becoming increasingly obvious to me that I've neglected The Green Skeptic and its readers for too long -- my last post was August 2nd.
But there's good reason!
In addition to the usual summer vacation (those of you who follow me on Twitter or Instagram will have seen my tweets from Martha's Vineyard), back to school, and the Jewish holidays, which I've been fortunate enough to enjoy with my fiancee, Samantha, I've been cooking up a few other things -- besides delicious meals.
First, is EY Cleantech's upcoming CEO Retreat in Napa, California, where we'll welcome over 80 cleantech CEOs, corporate, and government leaders representatives. It's a very exciting event and I've had the pleasure of organizing and managing it for the second straight year. You can read more about it (and read last year's report) HERE.
Second, I've begun work on a new book of nonfiction that pulls together stories of cleantech innovation and my own insights on the sector, which will be of interest to readers of The Green Skeptic. (More on that later, I hope.)
And finally, this fall, the Aldrich Press is publishing my first full-length collection of poetry, FALLOW FIELD. The book consists of 45 poems, representing my best work from the past quarter century, and you can order your signed copy of FALLOW FIELD here:
Here is what others have said about this collection, FALLOW FIELD:
“Scott Edward Anderson’s poems honor the reality that the things of the world – rye grass, fall warblers, ravens, owls, ‘Sargassum drifting/ in a pelagic wave,’ lovers and sourdough bread – speak to and for our innerness. Here the sense of place is not simply a matter of geography, but of feeling one’s way into that sense of becoming that makes one’s path clear. The book’s fourth section is comprised of poems that beautifully embrace the very human need to join the inner and outer, a territory defined, as the poem titles suggest, by ‘Becoming,’ ‘Shapeshifting,’ ‘Cultivating,’ ‘Mapping,’ and ‘Healing.’ Guided since childhood, as the book’s closing long poem relates, by nature’s teaching, Anderson is devoted to finding the words for what it means to dwell mindfully among others on the wounded earth.”–Alison Hawthorne Deming, author of Rope: Poems
For those of you not familiar with my poetry, it is rooted in nature and grounded in what Robert Hass called the “strong central tradition of free verse made out of both romanticism and modernism, split between the impulses of an inward and psychological writing and an outward and realist one, at its best fusing the two.” (Hass, Introduction to Best American Poetry 2001)“I was impressed by Anderson’s engagement with nature — especially the way in which his lyrical lines sketch the profound relationship between humans and their environment.”– Jonathan Galassi, author of Left-handed: Poems
I studied with Hass and with Gary Snyder, along with the late Walter Pavlich, and received some great mentoring and advice from poets Alison Hawthorne Deming, Donald Hall, Colette Inez, and Karen Swenson, as well as wonderful friends and readers.
My poetry is informed by a deep engagement with the natural world, attuned to the smallest details and complexities of nature and our experience of place. Attentiveness and mindfulness are critical to my method of working, both as the poem first evolves and later, through the often rigorous process of revision.
I believe poetry is the most direct language with which to approach our place in the world and reconnect us to nature. By nature, I mean not only the natural world, but also the built environment; not only the processes and causal powers of the physical world, but our immediate experience of the spiritual and the non-human.
For the past twenty five years, I have been building a body of poetry that tries to achieve my goal of writing that is open, approachable, and eminently readable, at the same time that it is intellectual and revels in the joy of language. FALLOW FIELD represents the best of my poetry over that time.
Order your signed copy of FALLOW FIELD below:
