Dear Human at the Edge of Time: Poems on Climate Change in the United States

Saturday, February 10th | 5:30-7:00pm with optional tour of the Ryan Resilience Lab at 5:00pm

Complimentary admission for ERP members

All are welcome – Suggested minimum donation $10 per attendee to support a healthy Elizabeth River though not required in our commitment to providing equitable access to our river-related programming

The second event of Resilient Reeds, a spotlight series featuring the latest environmental writers

Join us for the second event of the Ryan Resilience Lab’s Resilient Reeds spotlight series where science and art merge with Dear Human at the Edge of Time, an anthology of climate poetry released in late 2023 as a companion piece to the Fifth National Climate Assessment, to which the anthology’s co-editor Jeremy S. Hoffman contributed. Anthologist and Virginia Poet Laureate Emerita Luisa A. Igloria and Hoffman will read poems from the anthology alongside contributors Kindra McDonald Greene, Director of Norfolk’s Elizabeth River Trail, Gail Giewont, Lesley Wheeler, Denise Wilcox and and other local poets. Afterward, there will be opportunity for conversation and Q&A with the audience— poets, scientists, “dear humans”— all of us who are working together to weave something extraordinary: hope, despite living on the edge of time.

“…we are tethering at the edge of summer…/if we stay here too 

long, we will erode with the mountains…/ 

The edge is not the end. We still have time to try.”   

                                           - Eva Chen and Cassandra Bousquet

Presented in Partnership with the Elizabeth River Trail Foundation

Part of The Ryan Resilience Series
Made Possible by Virginia Natural Gas

THE MISSION of the non-profit Elizabeth River Project seemed almost impossible when we started 30 years ago: To turn around the health of an urban river at the time presumed dead, with high rates of cancer in fish. These decades later, fishermen flock to the Elizabeth River, also known as the military and commercial harbor of Norfolk, VA, for some of the best fishing in the region. Otters and dolphin are back. The 2023 scorecard by area scientists for the first time gives the river several grades of “A” for overall water quality. More than 6,500 residents, 56 schools and 148 businesses participate with us as “River Stars,” voluntarily doing their part to reduce pollution and restore wildlife habitat.

However, an existential threat looms over the health of this ecosystem and its communities. Norfolk is experiencing the highest rate of relative sea level rise on the East Coast. As the river overflows normal bounds, reaching far into city blocks and then receding, it loads the Elizabeth with a toxic soup. Also unraveling the Elizabeth River Project’s pioneer progress with restoring wetlands, the rising seas are predicted to drown as much as 80 percent of this river’s marshes over the next 50 to 70 years.

Virginia Natural Gas with its signature gift for 2023 will make possible the first programming for our nationally important answer, the Ryan Resilience Lab, 4610 Colley Avenue, Norfolk, VA. Many coastal communities experience our challenges. The Ryan Lab will present a global model for how to live, work and play in the urban flood plain as sea levels rise. While final construction is still underway for the grounds and some of the green systems, we can’t wait to start programs. With special thanks to Virginia Natural Gas, we’re launching the Ryan Resilience Series in November 2023 with some of the freshest programming on sea level resilience anywhere.

You’re invited! Presenting present and future challenges and solutions for humans and the ecosystem as sea levels rise. Fresh, inspiring, thought-provoking programs in art, history and science, with a priority for engaging marginalized communities. All programs include optional, provocative tours of the Ryan Lab, designed with resilient technologies replicable to the public.

For more information on the Ryan Resilience Series, please contact Jamie Melvin, jmelvin@elizabethriver.org, 757-399-7487