Phaedra Cox-Farr - 2024

Poem about Coral Reefs And Increasing Temperature

One day someone
maybe with my name
will look over the ocean
see dead coral
white pale empty
and they will think
it was always this way
as we found the Ancient Roman and Greek statues faded from their color pure marble
and we thought how beautiful, how right
not learning until much later
they were made plastered in color

she may look down from the plane
and see the bleach spots
see life where there is not
and draw it in her journal as Michelangelo carved David
a statue that was supposed to reflect
what the ancients made not knowing they used color
not knowing
the whiteness of the coral was once
bright enough
to reflect a sunset
or cotton candy

Sources: the information I used was mostly from in-class lectures and the Netflix documentary “Breaking Boundaries the Science of Our Planet.” As for the statue information, here are some interesting articles about it: https://hyperallergic.com/383776/why-we-need-to-start-seeing-the-classical-world-in-color/
https://www.npr.org/2022/07/12/1109995973/we-know-greek-statues-werent-white-now-you-can-see-them-in-color

Poem about the future of the Amazon Rainforest

dry air vacuum
cows suffer and graze in the dead heat
where a
forest used to make half of its own rain
off atlantic humidity
and carbon would be stored by trees like secrets
now a savanna lays out like a heavy blanket
but it is already too hot

1,500 birds kept alive by a rainforest used to sing
and in its absence
the plain is silent
their song all but forgotten
one could imagine its tune or thousands of trees
but that’s not the same as the real thing

Sources:
https://www.audubon.org/news/the-amazon-could-soon-transition-dry-savanna-ecosystem
https://greenly.earth/en-us/blog/ecology-news/the-complex-role-of-the-amazon-rainforest

Poem about Biodiversity Loss

There exists a girl at a zoo
she’s got a face from the future somewhere hot and indistinct
like every American suburb or strip mall
she's looking at the biggest, prettiest animal she’s ever seen
it’s got sharp teeth, yellow eyes
draped in stripes
she can’t read yet so
she doesn’t understand the sign by the clear glass that says
Last one born in the wild, died in 2035

And somewhere on the other side of the park
a boy is learning what Rhinoceros are
how they survived before the
accelerated extinction
those words too big for him
and how the only ones now live in glorified cages
how it was important until it wasn’t
they were left to the shows and the fences and the exhibitions
and the nature centers which teach what once was

Thinking about these kids
I wonder
is it easier to know something and lose it
or to never know it prior to its ending
but only through books and museums

They will both learn when they are older
that these extinctions are not just reserved for animals
but also cultures and landscapes
reservations are not just for the wild animal
but that most beautiful things did not survive acceleration

Sources:
https://saveanimalsfacingextinction.org/animals/tigers/#:~:text=97%20percent%20of%20the%20tiger,pelts%2C%20meat%20and%20body%20parts
https://www.endangeredspeciesinternational.org/tigers.html#:~:text=Tigers%20only%20found%20in%20zoos,species%20and%20protect%20healthy%20environment
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26340794/#:~:text=Present%20rhino%20populations%20are%20small,risks%20of%20rhinos%20by%202036
https://www.savetherhino.org/rhino-info/threats/poaching-rhino-horn/

Artist's Statement

For my project, I wrote a series of poems discussing projected effects for certain ecological features (such as the Amazon Rainforest and Coral Reefs). I wrote about what would happen to them if we did not “save” them, I.E, reduce carbon emissions and eliminate our land use. Throughout this course, I found myself wondering a lot about what the world would look like if we continued as we are now. I was inspired to do my project in the form of poems because I think imagery is a powerful tool in poetry and poetry can be an accessible way to relay information and facts. It is easy to get bummed out by this information and so poetry was a way for me to process these feelings and connect with climate change and biodiversity loss on a deeper level. Some things in the poems are capitalized and some are not. As far as the process, I began the first poem back in February before I knew what my final project would be and wrote the other two within the last month.