In March, 2015, SARAS Board Member and current SARAS co-director Professor Laurie Beth Clark asked American writer, poet and translator, current board member of SARAS Jesse Lee Kercheval about involving poets in the next SARAS conference. Kercheval proposed editing a bilingual anthology of poems about the environment, with poets from the anthology then participating in the conference. SARAS sponsored a competition for the best eco-poetry by Argentinian and Uruguayan with the three winners of the prizes, Premios de Poesía de SARAS, attending the conference in Maldonado that coming March.

As editor, Keverclal arranged for the translation of the work from Spanish to English for the bilingual anthology and Earth, Water and Sky/ Tierra, Agua y Cielo was co-published in Uruguay by SARAS and Editorial Yaugarú in February, 2016.

On March 1, 2016, the prize winning poets, Natalia Romero, Sebastián Rivero, Virginia Lucas and I attended the conference in Maldanado and they read their work to a crowded auditorium of scientists, students, and scholars. Later, following the day of presentations open to the public, the poems were used in the smaller workshops that SARAS conducted. On March 2, there was a second reading from the anthology in Montevideo, with seven of the ten poets in the anthology participating. This second reading introduced this important eco-poetry to a larger public and helped make more people aware of SARAS and its the mission.

But interest in the anthology, and SARAS’s work on environmental issues, did not stop after the conference. Poems from the anthology were published in the U.S. by World Literature Today (https://www.worldliteraturetoday.org/blog/road/scientific-poetry-poetic-scientists), the Adirondack Review and the Michigan Quarterly Review. “Otter,” by first prize winner Natalia Romero, was chosen by Poetry Daily, an important site that selected the best of poetry published in the U.S., as the Poem of the Day. The anthology was reviewed in the U.S. as well, including this review (https://literarytranslators.wordpress.com/2016/05/26/sustainability-in-translation-review-of-earth-water-and-sky-an-anthology-of-environmental-poetry/) which ends by saying “Earth, Water and Sky: An Anthology of Environmental Poetry is an incredibly moving synthesis of art and the issues that beset [the environment] . . . SARAS goal, using poetry to exhibit nature and the hopes for a sustainable future, is wonderfully executed.

Then in February, 2017, thanks to the support of SARAS, Virginia Lucas, one of the prize winning poets from the anthology, went to the U.S. for a reading tour that started with visits to classes and a reading at James Madison University which also included Seth Michelson, the translator for Natalia Romero, reading her work. Virginia Lucas also attended the Associated Writing Programs and Writers Convention in Washington. D.C. This is an annual conference that draws 12,000 writers from around the U.S. and the world. Virginia was part of a panel at the conferences and a Dialogos Books signing for Earth, Water and Sky a t the conference Book Fair which also included the translators from the anthology Ron Salutsky, Catherine Jagoe, Seth Michelson and Laura Cesarco Eglin.

In University Wisconsin-Madison, Virginia gave a talk for the Latin American, Caribbean, and Iberian Studies Program and a reading for the Program in Creative Writing where students from the MFA in Creative Writing read other poems from the Earth, Water and Sky anthology by the poets Natalia Romero, Sebastian Rivero, Tatiana Oroño, Maria Sanchez and Ignacio Fernandez Palleja. Then drove to Notre Dame University where Virginia held a question and answer session with students and read at the university bookstore. The final stop on the tour was New York City where we met with the Consul General Pauline Davies at the Uruguayan Consulate, then had a reading at McNally Jackson Books.

To acces “Earth, Water and Sky: An Anthology of Environmental Poetry” please click here