Jessica is a graduate student at University of Denver’s Graduate School of Social Work, studying the emerging field of “green social work.” Through her studies and her volunteering with 350 Colorado over the last seven months, she has grown increasingly passionate about bold and radical solutions that center environmental justice, climate justice, social justice, and ecological justice and that challenge anthropocentrism (the perspective that puts human rights and wellbeing above the rights and wellbeing of all other living and non-living beings in our shared ecosystem).

by Sam Killmeyer April is a month to celebrate the re-greening of the world, and there’s no better way to honor something special than with poetry! Plus, it just so happens to be both National Poetry Month and Earth Month, which gives you yet another reason to turn to eco-poetry. Here are excerpts of a few poems that are bringing me joy, including pieces by Colorado-based poets. 

Written by Janis Hallowell I first heard the word biochar in January, 2021 in a Zoom meeting. I had never heard or read it before. I gathered that it had something to do with carbon farming but I didn’t know what that was, exactly, either. I started asking around. My farmer neighbors didn’t know what it was.