Photo by Simmons B. Buntin (2006), though the ad just came out.
Alas, I have been neglecting this, my blog. But I wanted to post my reading list for Monday evening’s poetry reading at the Innisfree Poetry Bookstore & Cafe in Boulder. Get yer details here.
I hope you’ll join me to hear the following:
- “Friday Afternoon” – Bloom
- “Drawing” – Bloom
- “Plastic” – Bloom
- “Shower” – Bloom
- “Shine” – Bloom
- “Wild Mint” – Bloom
- “Coyote” – Riverfall
- “Indigo Bunting” – Riverfall
- “Great American Chicken” – Riverfall
- “In May I Consider My Websites” – Bloom
- “Bosque” – Bloom
- “Her Mission of Light” – Bloom
- “On Considering the Universe, Sweet Acacias Blooming between Sidewalk and Street” – Bloom
Don’t be shy: come on over to Boulder!
Prairie Crossing in Grayslake, Illinois -- northwest of Chicago -- is a transit-oriented, mixed-use community that was developed in concert with an organic farm, learning farm, stables, and more. It is one of 12 projects of the UnSprawl case study book.
Over on my One-Car Town blog, a reader noted that while I asked what “UnSprawl” means, I never actually defined it. Fortunately, defining the term — which I coined when founding Terrain.org: A Journal of the Built & Natural Environments nearly 15 years ago — isn’t too tricky. And yet “UnSprawl” can mean many different things to many different people, for what is one person’s sprawl might be another person’s utopia.
As a category, however, UnSprawl is the section of Terrain.org that, in each issue, contains an in-depth narrative and design-oriented review of a development that is environmentally, economically, and culturally more viable than conventional suburban (which is to say, car-oriented) development. So it really means communities (usually fairly new projects, but not always) that are un-sprawled in their design and implementation. With 27 issues published so far, we’ve explored more than two dozen innovative developments across North America.
Earlier this year I was approached by the folks at Planetizen Press to assemble a new book of 12 of these updated case studies — actually, 11 current and one new study. It’s a wonderful opportunity to continue to highlight these good projects, as well as to promote Terrain.org.
So even though the contract doesn’t cover the expenses necessary to visit and rephotograph all of the projects, as well as interview some of the bright minds behind them, I jumped at it. And in researching opportunities for reimbursing my travel expenses, I realized that using a fundraising site like Kickstarter.com might just do the trick. Why? First, it brings together a wealth of creative projects, including journalism projects such as the UnSprawl case study book, so that people who might not otherwise learn of a project now can find out more, and support it, on a secure platform that they know and trust. Second, it ensures that those who pledge to the project receive something in return, in our case ranging from a Terrain.org sticker to a copy of the book once published to a personal onsite tour of one of the developments. Third, it ensures that only those projects that meet their funding goals move forward — so there’s no risk that the project won’t be completed if not fully funded.
The UnSprawl case study book funding goal is $2,500, and it must be met by September 5th for the funding to be released. The book itself is due November 1st, and I’ve already been traveling a lot this summer — to Oregon, California, and Illinois. Trips to Tennessee, Georgia, Colorado, and Texas are on the horizon.
With ten case studies written by me and two by Ken Pirie, the UnSprawl case study book will be unique in its full-color project overviews, interviews, informative sidebars, resources, and exclusive online content. You can help support this important book — and learn about on-the-ground efforts to build community while counteracting global warming and other threats to our built and natural environments — by contributing to the project.
If building resource-efficient, pedestrian-oriented communities that create authentic sense of place is important to you, please consider helping us out.
Learn more and pledge online before September 5th at http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/635178095/unsprawl-case-study-book.
Thanks very much for your consideration.
I’d love to see you at one of the following events coming up in late June and early July as we trek up to the Pacific Northwest:
June 29, 2011 : 1 p.m. and 2 p.m.
Poetry Reading with Derek Sheffield
Johnston Ridge Observatory, Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument, Washington
July 6, 2011 : 8 p.m.
Poetry Reading with Dorine Jennette, Davis Poetry Night Reading Series
Bistro 33, Davis, California
I’ll also be visiting RiverPlace in Portland, Oregon, and the Suisun City Waterfront in Suisun City, California, as part of a project to update a series of Terrain.org UnSprawl case studies. Look for an official announcement on that in mid-July.
While I’ll still post here, especially on writing, photography, and family, I’ve created a new blog: One-Car Town: Logging the one-car lifestyle in new suburbia. Check it out at:
One-Car Town tracks my experience living without a car in suburban Tucson, Arizona. As man of you know, my wife, two daughters, and I live in the community of Civano; I work about 16 miles away, at the University of Arizona, though I also edit Terrain.org: A Journal of the Built & Natural Environments. Recently we sold our two cars, dumping their monthly payments in favor of a trusty used Honda Accord. That’s the family ride.
I now carpool and take the bus to work, a big switch after driving solo for the last eleven years. Why the change? That’s what this blog is about: to explore the social, economic, and environmental factors of pursuing simplicity in a one-car-per-family lifestyle. Won’t you come along for the ride?
Take a gander and follow the blog if you so choose:
Last month, the Tucson Clay Co-op supplied bowls for poets and poetry lovers to inscribe poems onto before glazing. My younger daughter Juliet and I participated, and then read the poems from our bowls along with a couple other dozen folks, with Tucson poet laureate Ofelia Zepeda, at Bentley’s House of Coffee & Tea in Tucson last night. It was a wonderful gathering and lovely way to combine two different forms of art.
Here’s Juliet’s bowl and poem:
Juliet’s poem is:
Dads
Some dads
get mad and
sad. But you’re
always glad.
I love you for who
you are and I love your
orange Subaru car.
I love you dad.
You’re the best dad
a girl could ever have.
:: gush :: What dad could ask for more than that? And here’s my bowl:
My poem reads:
On Considering the Universe, Sweet Acacias
Blooming between Sidewalk and Street
Trunks glow blue
among yellow flowers:
whole constellations of them
in the dark branches
of the night.
This was the fourth annual poetry and pottery event but our first. We look forward to participating next year and thereafter!
We had a wonderful field trip to the Sweetwater Wetlands water treatment facility for our “Birds & Poems” course Saturday morning. Here are a few photos, but check out the full gallery of 39 images — both poets and birds — here.
A northern shoveler stretches his wings.
A red-winged blackbird eyes me as I consider Wallace Stevens’ “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird.” How many ways do they have of looking at — or through — us?
An American coot finds a thin branch to bring to its nest-in-progress at the pond’s edge.
The punk rocker of the Sweetwater crew: a pied-billed grebe, making a rare above-water appearance before diving.
View these and 35 other photos at http://www.simmonsbuntin.com/images/gallery/2011/sweetwater.
For those of you following along, here’s what I’ll be reading when I have the pleasure and honor of joining David Ray at the Tucson Festival of Books on the UA campus (our session is 11:30 a.m., Sunday, Kiva Room, Student Union Memorial Center):
- “Drawing” from Bloom
- “Friday Afternoon” from Bloom
- “Indigo Bunting” from Riverfall
- “In May I Consider My Websites” from Bloom
- “Wild Mint” from Bloom
- “Coyote” from Riverfall
- “Shine” from Bloom
- “Antler among Poppies” from Bloom
- “Her Mission of Light” from Bloom
- “On Considering the Universe, Sweet Acacias Blooming between Sidewalk and Street” from Bloom
Won’t you join me and David?
Only in its third year, the Tucson Festival of Books — held this year on March 12 and 13, at the University of Arizona — is so well run and well-attended you’d think it’s in its thirtieth year!
And this year I have the good fortune of being one of the readers. I’ll be reading poetry from my books Bloom and Riverfall with the wonderful, and wonderfully political poet David Ray. I think it will be a pretty great mix of desert place & people poetry, and I hope you’ll join us:
March 13, 2011 : 11:30 a.m.
Student Union Kiva Room, University of Arizona
Local Authors Read from New Nature Anthology at Tohono Chul Park
February 20, 2011, 2-4 p.m., Tohono Chul Park Education Center Classroom #1
Alison Hawthorne Deming, Gayle Jandrey, Tony Cross, and Simmons B. Buntin—a few of the more than 50 contributors to Wildbranch: An Anthology of Nature, Environmental, and Place-based Writing—will read from the volume at the southern Arizona book launch. Tohono Chul Park, located at 7366 N. Paseo del Norte (near the northwest corner of Ina and Oracle) in Tucson, Arizona, will host these four authors on Sunday, February 20, 2011, from 2-4 p.m. The reading and signing, with books available for purchase, will take place in the Park’s Education Center, Classroom #1. (Education Center Parking Map)
Wildbranch is a powerful collection of essays and poetry—most of which are previously unpublished—by a variety of prominent American environmental writers and exciting new voices. It offers an intimate portrait of the natural world drawn through the wisdom, ecological consciousness, and open hearts of its exceptional contributors.
The Wildbranch Writing Workshop, founded by Annie Proulx and cosponsored by Orion magazine and Sterling College, has encouraged thoughtful natural history, outdoor, and environmental writing for more than twenty years. The anthology includes the works of former Wildbranch faculty Edward Hoagland, Janisse Ray, Scott Russell Sanders, and Alison Hawthorne Deming, as well as many other notable authors.
Alison Hawthorne Deming is professor of creative writing at the University of Arizona. She lives near Agua Caliente Hill in Tucson. She is the author of four books of poetry, Science and Other Poems; The Monarchs: A Poem Sequence; Genius Loci; and Rope. Deming has also published three nonfiction books, Temporary Homelands; The Edges of the Civilized World, which was a finalist for the PEN Center West Award; and Writing the Sacred into the Real. Her poems and essays have appeared in the Georgia Review, Orion, Islands, Pushcart Prize XVIII: Best of the Small Presses, American Nature Writing, Writing it Down for James: Writers on Life and Craft, Verse, Universe: Poems on Science and Mathematics, and the Norton Book of Nature Writing. She taught at Wildbranch in 2007 and 2009.
Gayle Jandrey, writing as G. Davies Jandrey, is a retired educator, poet, and writer of fiction who lives in Tucson, Arizona. She has worked as a fire lookout in Saguaro National Park and Chiricahua National Monument. Gayle’s short fiction has appeared in Calyx, Bilingual Review, Portland Review, the Berkeley Fiction Review, and others. Her novel, A Garden of Aloes, was published in 2008. She attended Wildbranch in 1994 and studied with Gale Lawarence.
Tony Cross lives and works in San Francisco and writes as often as possible. He studied writing briefly at Sarah Lawrence College and also studied music at the Oberlin Conservatory. He has attended Wildbranch twice, in 2007 and 2008, and had the privilege of studying with Scott Russell Sanders and Alison Hawthorne Deming.
Simmons B. Buntin lives in the community of Civano in southeast Tucson, Arizona. He is the founding editor of Terrain.org: A Journal of the Built & Natural Environments. He has published two books of poetry: Bloom (2010) and Riverfall (2005), both by Ireland’s Salmon Poetry. His poetry and prose have appeared in Isotope, Orion, Kyoto Review, North American Review, High Desert Journal, Weber Studies, Versal, and many others, and he is a recipient of a Colorado Artist’s Fellowship for Poetry. He attended Wildbranch in 2008 and studied with Scott Russell Sanders.
For more information about the event, please visit www.tohonochulpark.org or contact Jo Falls at (520) 742-6455 x228.
Published October 2010
University of Utah Press
160 pp., paper $17.95
ISBN 978-1-60781-124-4
Praise for Wildbranch
“The overall quality of writing is extremely high. Many of the voices are fresh and engaging, and they add up to a compelling ethical perspective on this beautiful planet and the fellow creatures with whom we humans share it.”
—John Elder, Middlebury College
“One of the richest collections of environmental writing to emerge in years. A special virtue of this new collection is the range of voices offered, and student writers in particular will find the diversity of voices inspiring and empowering.”
—Scott Slovic, University of Nevada, Reno
Simmons B. Buntin