Poems For A Feverish Planet: An Evening Of Readings & Conversation With Kamala Platt

In a special PoemAlley engagement tomorrow night at Curley’s Diner, beginning at 7:30, environmental feminist, visual/performance artist, author and adjunct profesora Kamala Platt will share and discuss material from her various collections, including Weedslovers (Finishing Line 2014) and On the Line (Wings Press, 2010), as well as the “green rascuache” lifeways by which she seeks footholds of dignity, well-being and sustainability defying industrialism, militarism and other toxic -isms driving a simmering world’s accumulating crises.

While Kamala’s concern for ecology and human rights owes

its roots to a cross-cultural childhood in Orissa, India and in the Kansas Mennonite community, her knowledge has been enhanced through her work with the Esperanza Center for Peace & Justice, the Climate Reality Leadership Corps, Texas Women Farmers’ Holistic Management and other organizations.

Her creative and social activism finds expression in The Meadowlark Center, a rural venue for community arts, education, environment and social justice activities, situated on the Meadowlark Homestead in Kansas built by her grandmother in the 1950s, as well as Kamala’s complementary Eastside Barrio home in San Antonio, affording guests an all-in-one native habitat/garden, library and studio, where nopalitos, loquats and other seasonal produce are served up in equal measure with books and art.

Kamala has attained fellowships with the Feminist Research Institute at the University of New Mexico and the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center (Gateways) in San Antonio. Holding several degrees, including an MFA in poetry from Bowling Green State University, Ohio and a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature (University of Texas, Austin), Kamala served as compiler on Kimientos (Wordsworth, 1992) and contributor to Wild Things: Children's Culture and Ecocriticism (Wayne State University Press, 2004).

Explore Kamala’s blog, ”artists vs death penalty” here; you can also click here to find out more about her.

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Further Reading:

Adams, Carol J., Ecofeminism and the Sacred (Continuum, 1993)

Diamond, Irene, Fertile Ground: Women, Earth, and the Limits of Control (Beacon Press, 1997)

“                     “, Reweaving the World: The Emergence of Ecofeminism (Sierra Club Books, 1990)

Pandey, S, Emergence of Eco-Feminism and Reweaving the World (MD Publications, 2011)

Shiva, Vandana, Earth Democracy: Justice, Sustainability, and Peace (North Atlantic Books, 2015)