Kirstin Waldkoenig

Kirstin is a poet and environmental educator interested in an accessible and artistic re-imagining of our environmental ethics. She studied philosophy and poetry at Susquehanna University, and has since lived in the northern plains of Germany and the redrock desert of Utah. She currently works at Shaver’s Creek Environmental Center in Pennsylvania.

It wasn’t until I lived in Berlin, Germany and was seriously committed to foreign language learning that I realized how closely language is bound to places in our lives. As I write, the places I’ve been are coaxed to the surface of consciousness and evoke an unmistakable physical and emotional connection. My poetry often explicitly expresses this and focuses on our communication with place – with nature, with the earth we find our home. I am interested in opening conversations to include the reality of our physical presence, and finding a way to talk about our home as it is continually altered through climate change.

(ordered from the most abstract to the most concretely related