Re-making the World: Autoethnographic Interventions

Anandam Kavoori is professor and director of the Environmental Communication Program at the University of Georgia, Athens. He grew up in a community surrounded by a thorn scrub forest of Gujarat, India (his father was a rural development officer). This sparse, parched land shaped his love for nature. In 2014, he began teaching environmental storytelling (https://envtjour.uga.edu/) with courses taught on the Georgia coast, Costa Rica, and Austria. These poems emerge from that experience, and are autoethnographic in specific ways. The poem “Silence” refers to the authors decision to finally engage with Climate Change directly in the classroom, in public forums and on a personal level, rather than side-stepping a hot political issue. The poem “The Coming of Truth” and “Keeping [U.S.] America the Beautiful” engages with his attempts at finding a pedagogical approach in his teaching of Climate Change. The poem “The Future” reflects his darkest moments, when he feels that human greed and the politics of Climate Change will not allow for a future for his—and all the other children—of Earth.