Paloma Press

Description

In Fall 2023, the congressionally-mandated Fifth National Climate Assessment (NCA5) report was released under the U.S. Global Change Research Program to support informed decision-making relating to climate change impacts, risks, and responses.

Dear Human at the Edge of Time: Poems on Climate Change in the United States, edited by Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellows Luisa A. Igloria and Aileen Cassinetto & NCA5 Chapter Lead Dr. Jeremy S. Hoffman, was created out of the need to tell our human stories alongside climate science, and is offered as a companion to NCA5.

The Dear Human anthology was recognized by the American Book Fest Awards and forged partnerships with over 30 public and private organizations, including Poets for Science and Wick Poetry Center at Kent State University which developed the interactive Dear Human microsite to help “foster creativity, innovation, and discovery,” the American Geophysical Union (AGU) which produced the Dear Human Earth Day video to explore our “profound connection to the Earth and the responsibility we bear as stewards of its delicate ecosystems,” and UC Berkeley which hosted the “Dear Human at Future’s Edge: Science, Creativity and Climate Futures” conference focused on the intersection of climate science, art and ecopoetry.

Praise

President Joe Biden
“As we celebrate the rollout of the Fifth National Climate Assessment, let this inspiring collection be a reminder that there is nothing beyond our capacity if we work together.”

California State Senator Josh Becker, Chair of the Senate Budget Subcommittee on Resources, Environmental Protection and Energy
“I’m so proud of former San Mateo County Poet Laureate Aileen Cassinetto, Dr. Luisa A. Igloria and Dr. Jeremy S. Hoffman’s anthology ‘Dear Human (at the Edge of Time)’. Our climate crisis is the foremost issue in our world right now, and while we still have time to save ourselves, that time is waning. The poetry in this book is as complex as our world, but it offers hope for a better tomorrow.”

Renato Redentor Constantino, Deputy Chair of the Expert Advisory Group of the 58-government Climate Vulnerable Forum
“This book reminds us we are in a state of collapse as well as rebirth. It is both lamp and spear, lyric and shield. It is a companion we will need as we navigate the long dark night of the climate crisis and the rubble of human certainties and conceits.”

Jane Hirshfield, Co-Founder of Poets for Science and elected member of the Academy of Arts and Sciences
“The DEAR HUMAN anthology is rich, deep, and ultimately heartening… So many voices in this book are new to me—that too is heartening. The informedness of the poems. Their integration of fact and feeling… Rachel Carson wrote about the melting ice caps in the late 1940s. Gary Snyder saw what the oil economy was doing in that decade also. The first Earth Day? Not until 1970. We'd already landed on the moon before people began to take in what was needed here on earth… and then came decades of willful not-doing, self-blinding, consuming. But… we saw. We bore witness. There were steps forward along with steps backward. And now more than ever, at last, the chorus of earth-defenders and earth-embracers grows omnipresent, visible not least in the pages of this book.”

Dr. Sam Illingworth, Associate Professor at Edinburgh Napier University and Chief Executive Editor, Geoscience Communication
“I am inspired by the power of poetry to move us, to challenge us, and to connect us to one another and to the natural world. Dear Human at the Edge of Time is a testament to the vital role that poetry can play in raising awareness of the climate crisis and in spurring us to action.”

Dr. Edward Maibach, Distinguished University Professor & Director at the George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication
“Focusing on climate change—as I have done for nearly two decades—has a terrifying way of accelerating time. Like a quiet walk in the woods, these poems coaxed time to slow down for me, and occasionally stand still. That stillness created space in which to see further and more  broadly. I'm grateful to these poets for having spoken so deeply to me, and to time.”

Cristina Veresan, STEAM Educator and Albert Einstein Distinguished Educator Fellow
“I'm heartened that this poetry anthology will accompany the 5th National Climate Assessment, for it beautifully explores what is at stake with both grief and hope. I highly recommend it to all humans! Secondary teachers: consider incorporating it into your science or humanities courses. Discussing these rich poems will enhance your curriculum and allow students to process climate change impacts in a way that supports healthy social-emotional development. Perhaps it may even inspire some student climate change poetry!”

Claire Wahmanholm, author of Meltwater and winner of the Montreal Prize 2022
“An anthology like this represents just a sliver of people who are deeply invested in this work. For every poet in this anthology—each of whom care desperately about the world and what we are doing to it—there are approximately 2,500,739 people in the United States—some poets, but mostly not—who feel the same way: that we are in serious trouble; that greed has brought us here; that we love the world and think it is worth saving; that we are willing to reimagine our societies in order to do it.”

Dr. Jessica Whitehead, Joan P. Brock Endowed Executive Director, Institute for Coastal Adaptation and Resilience 
“...I’m so impressed by the work of the poets in this anthology, and the concepts they bring you behind Dear Human at the Edge of Time. This work is a unique opportunity to bring feeling through poetry together with the science of the forthcoming Fifth U.S. National Climate Assessment, which also, for the first time upon its release in the late fall, will bring visual art into the report. When I was a member of the Sustained National Climate Assessment Federal Advisory Committee in 2016-17, we were charged with thinking about how to make the NCA more engaging, more useful, and more relevant for everyone who calls the United States home. Dear Human at the Edge of Time is an amazing concept from Luisa A. Igloria, Aileen Cassinetto, and Jeremy Hoffman, which answers that charge in the best way possible.”