Waking Up to the Earth: An Environmentally-Inspired Poetry Reading with CT’s State Poet Laureate

Welcome spring with a special nature-inspired poetry reading at the New Canaan Land Trust. Join us in-person to hear Connecticut Poet Laureate, Margaret Gibson, and other Connecticut Poets read from their new anthology, titled Waking Up to the Earth: Connecticut Poets in a Time of Global Climate Crisis. The event will feature several poet laureates from around the state sharing their poems inspired by nature and the climate crisis.

The Book

Waking Up to the Earth: Connecticut Poets in a Time of Global Climate Crisis is an anthology of poems by Connecticut poets who write of their relationships with the earth in a time of global climate crisis. The scope of the poems goes far beyond Connecticut to the whole ecosystem we humans share. With praise and wonder, and sometimes with grief or anger, the poems in this collection pay close attention to our planet and its inhabitants, its forests and oceans, its creatures: turtles and dung beetles, bats and bobcats, oak trees, orchards, and rivers. In a time of climate crisis, the poems in this anthology ask everyone to wake up to the earth, and to cherish it.

Get your copy of Waking Up to the Earth at Elm Street Books.

The Poets

Margaret Gibson, current State of Connecticut Poet Laureate, is the author of 12 books of poems, and editor of Waking up to The Earth. A new book, The Glass Globe, is forthcoming in 2021. AWARDS include the Lamont Selection for Long Walks in the Afternoon, her second book, 1982; the Melville Kane Award (co-winner) for Memories of the Future, (1986), and the Connecticut Book Award for One Body, 2008. The Vigil was a Finalist for the National Book Award in Poetry in 1993. Broken Cup was a Finalist for 2016 Poets’ Prize, and the title poem from the book won a Pushcart Prize for that year. “Passage,” from Not Hearing the Wood Thrush, was included in The Best American Poetry, 2017. She has written a memoir, The Prodigal Daughter, University of Missouri Press, 2008. Gibson is Professor Emerita, University of Connecticut. She lives in Preston, CT.  For more information, visit her website.

Additional Presenters Include:

• Christine Beck
• Carol Chaput
• Ginny Lowe Connors
• Mary Guitar
• Gwen Gunn
• Pat O’Brien
• Lana Orphanides