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Poet Tanya Holtland laments the toll of environmental apathy

Tanya Holtland
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Each day during the month of April, KUOW is highlighting the work of Seattle-based poets for National Poetry Month. In this series curated by Seattle Civic Poet and Ten Thousand Things host Shin Yu Pai, you'll find a selection of poems for the mind, heart, senses, and soul.

In her Ballard-based poem "Golden Gardens," Tanya Holtland contemplates environmental pollution and its impacts on non-human species and future generations.

Tanya Holtland is a poet and writer. She is author of the chapbook Inner River (Drop Leaf Press, 2016). Her eco-poetry collection Requisite (Platypus Press, 2020) was a finalist for the Broken River Prize and nominated for the 2021 Forward Prize for Best First Collection. Her work surrounds the intersections of memory, ecology, healing, design, and matriarchy.

Golden Gardens


feathered
underwing of the newborn


seagull has only just begun
to rot, by its first meal


filter,
dead cigarette at the tongue


mother feeds
her and I,


also deadened, dis—
believe


the symphony
preceding change


is surely all these symptoms
not us not


seeing the seals, turtles
not the coyote, wren, or deer


not the fox, salmon, frog
not the orcas, not the worms


not the whales, not the bees
not the waters, not these


losses
of meaning


or dawn can seem to rise
to meet the insatiable


distance between
the earth and us—


capable, loving, longing
conflicted in all our glory—


we, the only ones
who can tell and be told a lie


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