Microscopic Attention: Poem-making and Molecular Change
Come understand poetry as a molecular-scale process of care and conservation in the face of climate change with poet Éireann Lorsung!
Reservations
Not Required
Pricing
- Suggested Donation: $5.00
Location
Mather Auditorium
Climate change demands immediate and large-scale responses—responses at the scale of policy, government, and institutional life. But poetry works at a completely different scale: the scale of the syllable and of the changing light on winter afternoons. How and why might we understand poetry as a molecular-scale process of care and conservation in the face of climate and other catastrophes? And why might we take heart from this understanding?
Poets can't "change the world" in the way policymakers can, and poetry is not often received as world-changing, the way work in the hard sciences is. Nevertheless, poetry trains writers and readers in repeated attention to minute patterns, and that training can be brought to bear on the world around us, and can ground claims we make about how to live together on this planet.
As a poet, and like most people, the levers of power are out of Éireann Lorsung’s grasp—but change at the scale of the molecule is available, practical, and puts her in league with others who are working at this scale and beyond to make change. In her own work, “microscopic attention” takes the form of data (weather, temperature, appearance of plants/animals) collected through repeated walking within limited circumferences. This process allows her to formulate poetic claims about value and about beauty, and these in turn have formed her understandings of responsibility and relationship in our fragile world.
This Ted Exford Climate Stewards lecture is supported by Dave & Loretta (Exford) Hoglund.
About the Presenter
Éireann Lorsung works in a field of images, objects, movement, and texts, and especially in the overlap between printmaking and poetry. Her publications include Pattern-book (Carcanet, 2025), The Century (2020), winner of the 2021 Maine Literary Award in Poetry, Her Book (2013), and Music for Landing Planes By (2007), named a 'new and noteworthy collection' by Poets & Writers. Milkweed Editions will publish Pink Theory! in 2026. She is a 2016 NEA Fellow and held the 2025 Mary Routt Endowed Chair of Writing at Scripps College.