Scott T. Starbuck
Winner of a 2023 Blue Light Book Award, Bridge at the End of the World, New and Selected Poems complements Scott T. Starbuck’s 30 years of activism and creative writing instruction, including his Trees, Fish, and Dreams Climateblog with readers in 110 countries, and ecopoetry workshops the past four years at Scripps Institution of Oceanography in the UC San Diego Masters of Advanced Studies Program in Climate Science and Policy. This book features new work about the climate emergency, and brings together the best poems from four climate-themed books, Industrial Oz (Fomite, 2015), Hawk on Wire (Fomite, 2017) (July 2017 Editor’s Pick at Newpages.com, and chosen from 1,500+ books as a 2018 Montaigne Finalist at Eric Hoffer Awards), Carbonfish Blues (Fomite, 2018), and Between River & Street (MoonPath Press, 2021). New endorsements are from Washington State Poet Laureate Rena Priest, and writers Jerry Martien, Michael Spring, and Diane Frank. Other endorsements are from leading activist Bill McKibben, Senior Research Scientist at IPAC Caltech Yun Wang, Terrain.org Editor-in-chief Simmons B. Buntin, and poets Henry Hughes, Craig Santos Perez, Thomas Rain Crowe, Sandra Alcosser, John Shoptaw, Daniela Gioseffi, John Keeble, Eric Magrane, Teresa Mei Chuc, Prartho Sereno, Gail Entrekin, Anne Elvey, Marybeth Holleman, Ken Waldman, Bill Siverly, Florence Sage, Daniel Hudon, and Nancy Cook. Shoptaw, a poetry lecturer at University of California, Berkeley, wrote, 'Ecologists read the signs of unsustainability, poets give them voice, none more compellingly than Starbuck,' and Michael Potts of the University of South Australia wrote in a 2017 review at Plumwood Mountain Journal, 'Starbuck compels the reader to think about not just climate change itself, but also how deeply ideology and symbolism are embedded in the functioning of Western society and how unthinking acceptance of them has led to a world where money is digital. The digits on a screen are now no longer connected to any real or physical thing, but they are enough to make us acquiesce and take part in the continued rape of the planet [ . . . .] Starbuck attempts to cut through [this] in these poems.' Vivian Hansen at University of Calgary wrote in a 2019 review at The Goose (official publication of ALECC, the Association for Literature, Environment, and Culture in Canada), 'Starbuck’s style looks outward from his grounded position as a fisherman. [. . . .] He calls for human devotion toward the wild and climate change, a devotion that intercepts the hunter and veers toward prophecy and the promise of a new vision.' Bryan R. Monte wrote about Starbuck’s poems in a 2017 review at Amsterdam Quarterly, '[They are] the type the world needs in order to save the planet from wide-spread, lasting ecological destruction. [ . . . .] [This] is a powerful poetry [ . . . ] worth reading and discussing-especially in writing programmes.'
