Scholarly Scoop- Starin Park Community Building

Honoring Lives, Envisioning Change: Poetry and the Environment

How can literature shape environmental action? Muriel Rukeyser’s poem, The Book of the Dead (1938) memorialized the West Virginia Hawk’s Nest Tragedy and anticipated the development of Eco poetry. We’ll explore how her work launched a cascade of poetic and prose responses that continue to bring urgent environmental issues to the surface.

Jada Walmer is a Math major with an emphasis in Actuarial Science. Through the Research Apprentice Program (RAP) at UW-Whitewater, she got involved in research on poet Muriel Rukeyser.

Trudi Witonsky is an associate professor in the Department of Literature, Writing, and Film at UW-Whitewater. She specializes in First-Year English and twentieth-century American literature.