Poets Rejuvenate Environmentalist Spirit

With the calming sounds of Strawberry Creek echoing in the background, local environmental poets and artists gathered at Strawberry Creek on Saturday to raise awareness of environmental issues as part of the 10th annual Watershed Environmental Poetry Festival.

Hundreds of poets, students, residents and environmentalists congregated at the west entrance of campus to hear published poets read their work and push for the removal of culverts, drain crossings covering the creek.

The annual event is the brain child of UC Berkeley English professor and former U.S. Poet Laureate Robert Hass, who said the festival was a way of getting local environmentalists, artists and writers to work together to raise environmental awareness in Berkeley.

"It's to inspire local awareness, and to get (the community) to talk to each other," Hass said. "We want to reinspire them into environmentalism."

The celebration opened with a march from the Berkeley Farmer's Market on Martin Luther King Jr. Way to the site of the festival, tracing the trail of the creek underground.

Local organizations-including the Ecocity Builders, River of Words, Berkeley Citizens for Creek Restoration and the City of Berkeley Environmental Services-were on hand to set up booths to promote the benefits of removing the culverts and "daylighting" the creek.

Local poet Joanne Kyger, a frequent participant in the event, said the festival was a prime opportunity to spread her passion and relay her cause after living in West Marin for 30 years.

"We had one water moratorium back in 1971," said Kyger, who joined local environmentalists in the Marin area in a lawsuit against the city for only having one water source. "The community couldn't live on the water it had, it was such a small watershed. We didn't have enough water."

But for other attendees, the festival was a way to bring the environment to center stage.

"Relating poetry to our environment and nature, it's really wonderful on our part to make that connection since that connection is often lost," said junior UC Berkeley student Vanessa Lin, who writes poetry. "By relating art to nature, we are celebrating our relationship with planet earth, a relationship that is often ignored."

With local renowned poets headlining the event, some participants also said the interaction with the poets was an opportunity they could not pass up.

Palo Alto resident Mary-Marcia Casoly, who writes poetry about animals, Australia, China and fantasy creatures, said she has come to the festival for the past eight years to hear some of her favorite poets live.

"I've heard of them but I've never heard their voice," Casoly said. "There is always an element of surprise."

For the past seven years, the festival has been held at the Martin Luther King Jr. Civic Center Park. Following the closure of the park because of renovations, the event moved to the UC Berkeley campus at the request of Hass.

Hass said it is important to educate the community about the creek because "watershed is the place where other environmental sources branch out."

In order to make people understand how water is consumed and how to conserve it, we need to start at a much smaller level, he said.

"We need more intelligent ways to conserve water," Hass said. "To raise environmental consciousness and make people aware of that fact is to start by making people think about Strawberry Creek."

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