Description

Kelsey Street Press, paperback

Publication Date: August 15, 2021

Publisher Marketing:Introduction by Angela Hume. DEPOSITION | DISPOSSESSION: CLIMATE CHANGE IN THE SUNDARBANS, the posthumously published work by Marthe Reed, responds to the ecological crises of the Sundarbans of south Bangladesh and India. The work “talks back” to climate denialism, questioning Reed’s own and the United States’ role in climate change and its collateral damage. Interrogative, defiant, elegiac, the writing speaks to a realm in crisis–the fragility of a landscape, its human and other-than-human inhabitants, and the Sundarbans islands and archipelagos rapidly being swallowed by rising sea levels. Under such pressures, how do the inhabitantsand we who live elsewhere on the earthrespond? Reed does so by adopting a poetic method and collage technique that draws on a diverse set of resources. The completed book-length poem fuses together personal anecdotes and collected notes ranging in origin from scientific publications, the IPCC Synthesis Report, research on native plant and animal species, to discussions of cultural figures of the region, addresses to ethics and climate change boards, and literary texts such asThe Hungry Tideby Amitav Ghosh,Travels In TheMogul Empireby Franois Bernier, andSchizophreneby Bhanu Kapil.