Nature poetry has a rich heritage in the United States and
is always being written anew as our relationship with nature evolves. Our
national parks have also long partnered with artists through residencies,
exhibitions, and public programs to take the subjects of nature, culture, and
self and portray and investigate them together in unique ways for the broad
public. The 2016 centennial anniversary of the National Park Service is an
especially fitting moment to expand both of these traditions. The concept behind
this project draws inspiration from poetry as a powerful yet intimate art form
that can capture how we perceive the world around us always through language.
It is also rooted in installation and performance art, which bring surprising
encounters in the everyday world. Where park visitors expect signs to be
informational, authoritarian, scientific, or historical, here, poetry reverses
that and offers a subjective version of the same content. The poetic signs also
explore what it means to commune with nature in places like national parks with
other people and with wildlife, how officialdom and administrators also
"see and feel" nature with us, and how contemporary poetry and art
continue to experiment with addressing the natural world in our time.
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