As some of you know, I began work at the beginning of July as co-Executive
Director of the 31-year-old non-profit Friends of Ballona Wetlands, L.A.'s
preeminent wetlands education and restoration group.  To learn more about
us, go here: http://www.ballonafriends.org.

 One of the conditions of my signing was that I wanted the Friends to start
a blog, which I hope will be a DAILY destination for people who care about
wetlands preservation and the larger environmental/crisis of soul issues
that arise from habitat loss, urbanization, etc.  It's a broad subject, and
I will interpret it broadly.

The Friends board has approved my request to edit a five-to-seven-day-a-week
daily "magazine," to begin soon, with different segments/columnists each
day, like Monday essays, Tuesday local Ballona sightings and news, Wednesday
local history, Thursday FAQs about wetlands (what's an "indicator species?"
etc.), Friday poetry, Saturday Best of Reader Contributions, and, maybe even
Sunday Comix and Opinion.

 Thus, this appeal to you for new, unpublished work, in poetry, fiction,
essays, art, book reviews, or even comics, that is somehow wetlands,
estuary, swamp, bog, fen, river, ocean, etc., oriented. Forests are probably
out, since we're a wetlands in a semi-desert ecosystem.

 I'd like to publish your original work (at the usual non-profit,
hat-in-hand rates, i.e. free) on the blog, and potentially in a "Best Of"
hard-copy anthology.  Those rights only; all other rights are yours.  I can
offer a reciprocal link to your blog, website, or book site, so you benefit
from networking.  Also, given enough notice, I often help out-of-town poets
I admire book readings in Los Angeles or San Francisco.  And finally, The
Friends have a few events of our own coming up, and I am trying to shake
loose funding from donors to pay readers.

Our blog audience is people who are concerned about environmental issues,
and who have varying degrees of literary sophistication.  I don't know that
concrete poetry will work, or that most of them could slog through *The
Cantos* without a playbook, but I am certain that (off the top of my head,
in no particular order) *In a Station of the Metro* would fly, as would
Stevens' *Anecdote of Men By the Thousands*, Rilke's *The Way In*, Oliver's
*Some Questions You Might Ask*, Pattiann Rogers' *Dream of the Marsh Wren*,
Abani's *Muir Woods*, Kabir's *The Clay Jug*, Lisa Jarnot's *Everything I
Know About Corn*, Yusef Komunyakaa's *Ode to the Maggot*, Harryette Mullen's
*Kills Bugs Dead*, Ritsos' *The Models*, Levertov's *The Reminder*, Ursula
K. Le Guin's *Riding on the Coast Starlight*, Richard Shelton's *Sonora for
Sale*, David St. John's *Iris, *even Jack Gilbert's *Haunted Importantly*
…etc.

My bias is toward "ecopoetry," which is not nature poetry, per se, but much
harder to define.  James Englehardt, in an essay in Octopus Magazine <
http://www.octopusmagazine.com/issue09/engelhardt.htm>, suggests this:  The
ecopoem is connected to the world, and this implies responsibility.  Like
other poetic models that assume a connection and engagement (feminism,
Marxism, witness, etc.), ecopoetry is surrounded by questions of
ethics.  Should
the ecopoem *do* something in the world?  But how can a poem be said to
accomplish anything?

Scott Bryson's book "Ecopoetry" also has a number of wonderful essays and
definitions.  But don't get too hung up in definitions; I'll know what I
like when I see it.

As for essayists, I'm looking for the next Wendell Berry, Barry Lopez,
Oliver Sacks, Lewis Thomas, Lynn Margulis and Dorion Sagan, Bill McKibben,
Michael Pollan, Terry Tempest Williams, Susan Griffin—or all of *them* and
more.  Good, straight-ahead stylists who combine clarity, lyricism, and
science.

As for fiction, I'm on less firm ground as an editor, but Kaaren Kitchell,
Antioch MFA and member of WOMPO, will be our fiction editor, so your work is
in good hands.

AND, if you write reviews, I'm interested specifically in your reviews
of poetry collections that advance the craft and push the boundaries of
"nature" or "ecopoetry."

We have plenty of local photography, but if you have fine art or
illustrations, feel free to submit those or direct me to where on the
Web I can secure a quality JPEG.

I already have poetry submissions from Annie Finch,
Janet Burroway, Ron Koertge, Tony Barnstone, Ann Fisher-Wirth, Christopher
Merrill, Ellen Bass, C.J. Sage and Linda Pastan, to name just a handful, so
you will be in good company.

While I'm writing to you from a specific, unique place, the Ballona
Wetlands, consider my request an appeal from a juncture, if you will, of
soul and territory, a juncture that calls to mind one of my favorite quotes
from the poet/essayist Wendell Berry:

*This is the phenomenon of edge or margin that we know to be one of the
powerful attractions of a diversified landscape, both to wildlife and to
humans.  The human eye itself seems drawn to such margins, hungering for the
difference made in the countryside by a hedgy fencerow, a stream, or a grove
of trees.  And we know that these margins are biologically rich, the meeting
of two kinds of habitat.***

Write to me from the rich margins where you and the outer world overlap.  As
Novalis wrote, *The seat of the soul is where the inner world and the outer*
* **world meet.  Where they overlap, it is in every point of the** **
overlap.*

To the mundane:  Please submit, if you choose, documents in Microsoft Word,
any version before 2008.  I'm not sure we'll be able to deal with complex
formatting in poems, but I'll do my best.  MANDATORY:  With your
submission, write me a paragraph about your nearest estuary, wetlands,
swamp, bog, fen or most inspiring body of water to run in the introduction
to your piece, and tell ME specifically where it is.  I would like to link
our readers to the specific natural place that most moves and inspires our
contributors.  I may even put in a Google Map link to the area (one of our
contributors, Michael Salcman, sails Chesapeake Bay, for example; Janet
Burroway walks in Florida), as I would if I were running (I wish, but I
don't know how to reach her yet) a Mary Oliver poem and would spotlight
Provincetown on Cape Cod.

Again, if you want to see what the blog will look like, it will resemble the
rest of our site, http://www.ballonafriends.org.  I look forward to
receiving your work.
Thank you,

Richard Beban
[log in to unmask]

_________________________
Richard Beban, Co-Executive Director
Friends of Ballona Wetlands (www.ballonafriends.org)

211 Culver Blvd., Suite K
Playa del Rey, CA 90293
310.306.5994


*poems: <http://www.beban.org>*
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*pix: <http://www.flickr.com/photos/mythyes/>*