A River of Words - The Poetry of Place

It was late afternoon when Taraz and Megan, George and I canoed a section of the Black River, one of the most beautiful rivers in western Washington.

As some of you know, we gave them a canoe as a wedding gift last September, and it has given us a chance to get together for excursions out on the water. It was an incredibly peaceful day, perfect for meandering, replete with sunshine, a cool breeze, and the sounds of current trickling over beaver dams.

Former U.S. Poet Laureate (1995-1997) Robert Hass has written in "A River of Words" that early American history is steeped in a passionate attraction to wild places but that during the last one hundred years industries have been busy transforming the landscape and extracting from it. He got involved in “River of Words,” an annual, nationwide art and poetry contest for elementary and high school students. River of Words involves young people and their teachers in learning about the water ecology of their local environments

Robert Hass writes, " I invited about 30 American writers in the environmental tradition, from poets to scientists, to novelists, to essayists - as many of the writers in the country who write about “place” as I could gather- to come to Washington and read their work and talk about issues in the environmental tradition in American writing. And we thought, why not use my tenure as an opportunity to get kids involved early on in this kind of writing; to try to figure out ways of linking together in the schools the culture of knowledge and care about wild places with literature and science studies? By doing this, we could educate future generations of adults in a different way than we were educated."

The idea ultimately took form as a poetry and art contest for kids on the theme of getting to know their own watershed, the rivers and creeks of the places where they live. That was the origin of “River of Words.”

The history of this country is so much a history of the culture of rivers. It doesn’t matter whether children are urban or suburban or live in the country, their relationship to water is fundamental.

The first posters put out said, “What is your ecological address?” so that they could get in the habit of locating themselves and the place they live by understanding how water flowed through, how it was used, what other life forms were supported and were there because of the waters that flowed through the places where they lived.

Hass writes, "We also hoped to put teachers and students together with activists who are cleaning up creeks, making hiking trails around reservoirs, educating in state parks in community after community around the country."

John Muir wrote in the 1870s, “We’ve got compulsory education. What this country really needs is compulsory recreation. I want people to go to the school of the wind and the trees.”

I think it’s important to have young people understand that part of their education is an informed knowledge of the place where they live. Also, the experience of the people who are working to protect the environment will give them a sense of empowerment that they'll need to take care of our rivers.