So Little Time . . . Our new book is coming out in one month, and editors Dede and Alexandra have poured their time, their heart and souls into this project.
Marlboro College graduate and multimedia storyteller, videographer and photographer, Willow O’Feral, has just signed on to offer a few photos from her black and white collection, of which you can see in this post’s slideshow. Willow presently lives in NYC but hails from Northern California. She got a Bachelor’s degree at Marlboro College in Vermont, with a double-major in French and Film/Video. She plays dobra in the all-women samba-reggae percussion group, Batala NYC. Willow is a multi-media artist who primarily works in photography and video. See more of her work at http://snippetproductions.com
We’d like to take some time each week leading up to the book’s publication, to introduce some of the poets and photographers—to offer a sneak peak into the world of this book, the aegis of which began inside Dede’s head as she rode her bicycle along the White River in Vermont just 30 days after the 2011 devastation of Tropical Storm Irene. She saw trees that were flattened like matchsticks, silt and debris overflowed onto farmers’ fields—the scene was one of devastation. As Dede and her cadre of riders—Rebecca Jones, MD, physician and founder of The Vermont Greenprint for Health, and Paul Cameron, the director of Brattleboro Climate Protection—reached the state capital in Montpelier, they were greeted by bicycle riders from ALL over the state. There were students from UVM, who had ridden down from Burlington, families with kids in trailers, live music and dance, speeches from Bernie and Shumlin, and 350Vermont’s Kathy Blume, along with the eponymous Ben & Jerry handing out free ice cream. Dede recalls feeling elated with a spirit of how these Vermonters can change the world, a world faced with the reality of global climate change. We must all act together, before it’s too late….
Our very first GWP intern, Alexandra Sandman-Pitonyak, is a recent Bennington College graduate who took on the project with Dede without a second thought, and has this to say about its fruition:
From the beginning So Little Time has been about action, about the power of the collective to illuminate the heart of what is here. The heartache of what is here. It is about finding a way forward. As a collective, as a group, we are taking action. As individuals in a collective we are taking action.
We are offering a new direction through sincere observations, in the hopes that we can turn from a place of grief to a place of change.This book is not about quick solutions. It is about asking questions, and then being strong enough to stand before the storm of their answers.
Taking action requires courage and risk. Our hope is that each person who reads this book will be inspired to take action in such a way, that it reverberates in the community around them. Just as this book is made up of individual artists, it is each of our individual actions, coming together, that will create the change we need.
Greg Delanty
Our author, and lead poet in this quiet yet powerful book, is Greg Delanty, whose words augment and anchor the pages. We are honored to have worked with Greg who is originally from Cork, Ireland, and now splits his time as poet-in-residence at St. Michael’s College in Burlington, Vermont and his house in Derrynane.
We’d like to acknowledge the participation of ALL the poets, who have embraced and supported this project from the onset—with love, admiration, and a sense of urgency to giving voice to their words in the book, giving voice—not to themselves selfishly, but for the world to read and take action in order to work collectively to bring about the demand to end the perilous heating of our sole living planet.
Please join us at two upcoming Vermont Book Festivals. Save the date for Saturday, October 5, 2013, at 4:15 p.m. at the Brattleboro Literary Festival for a reading and book signing, along with the upcoming Burlington Book Festival—September 21st, we will be in Burlington to celebrate the release of our first children’s picture book, The Bird Book, with artist Brian D. Cohen giving a talk and signing books at the Phoenix in Burlington at 1:00 p.m.; but perhaps more important, from noon until 12:45, we will be protesting the Keystone Pipeline (visit www.350.org to sign up for a protest near you at “Draw the Line: Stop Keystone XL”), and help us spread the word so that world leaders and other countries will get on board.
On September 21st, we will draw the line to protect our communities from climate change and show President Obama that there is no turning back— to keep his climate promises, he has to stop Keystone XL and the tar sands.
We can’t wait to launch our new press—Green Writers Press, Giving Voice to Writers and Artists Who Will Make the World a Better Place. ~