Ada Limón is the author of six books of poetry, including The Carrying, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry. Her book Bright Dead Things was nominated for the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award. Her work has been supported most recently by a Guggenheim Fellowship. She grew up in Sonoma, California and now lives in Lexington, Kentucky where she writes, teaches remotely, and hosts the critically-acclaimed poetry podcast, The Slowdown. Her new book of poetry, The Hurting Kind, is forthcoming from Milkweed Editions in May 2022.

ADA LIMÓN

This poem was written when I was having a real moment of reckoning, not that I hadn't had it earlier, but where I was doing some deep reading about the climate crisis and really reckoning with myself, with where we were and what was happening, what the truth was. And I felt like it was so easy to slip down into a darkness, into a sort of numbness, and I didn't think that that numbness and darkness could be useful.

And what happens when people are saying, "Well, the earth is all going to burn anyway, so why does it matter? That nihilistic thinking feels very dangerous to me. And so I always want to bring it back to: what is it to hold frightening, overwhelmingly terrifying thoughts but also have some seed of hopefulness, some seed of acceptance and surrender to that there can be beauty. And maybe there’s even more beauty now as we see it shifting and changing and maybe slipping away from us.

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In the beginning of my work, I felt that I could only turn to myself. It was the only thing that I trusted enough to look at deeply. And while my work is still very autobiographical, I find I’m able to have a little bit of a wider scope, and I trust myself to look deeply at the world, not just the inner world.

Photo credit: Lucas Marquardt 

This interview was conducted by Mia Funk & Brianna Brown with the participation of collaborating universities and students. Associate Interviews Producer on this podcast was Austen Juul-Hansen. Digital Media Coordinator is Phoebe Brous.

Mia Funk is an artist, interviewer and founder of The Creative Process & One Planet Podcast (Conversations about Climate Change & Environmental Solutions).