Chris DeBoer – Celia Berrell Environmental Poetry
Chris DeBoer
“factory pollution,Yangtze River” by eutrophication&hypoxia is licensed under CC BY 2.0
“Crowd” by oatsy40 is licensed under CC BY 2.0
“post-flower-1060861” by TheNoxid is licensed under CC BY 2.0
Preface: Hi, my name is Chris DeBoer and my portfolio is on Celia Berrell who uses Environmental Poetry to give a deeper understanding of some topics and ideas around the world. The licensing I will use is Attribution CC BY.
Introduction: Throughout my portfolio, I am aiming to bring out a better understanding on how words and poetry along with the environment can create powerful sayings and meanings. Celia Berrell has written countless poems about the environment, but there were three that really stood out to me. In these poems, Berrell creates an image in the readers head as they read her poems and it allows the reader to be open minded. They can take her words and use them however they want to to create what the words are speaking to them. Berrell’s poems about the air, life, and the world population all share the same concept of how precious everything on this planet is.
Themes: Berrell’s poetry includes themes of life and looking into the future. The first theme is life and that all life is unique and special and needs to be kept alive. Plants can grow in the most interesting places where you would never expect to be possible. This relates to humans too. We all come from different backgrounds and childhoods, but we can all grow and become what we want to be. The second theme is how we should look into the future and realize that the future of living is dependent upon what we do during our lives here. Our Earth holds 7.8 billion people. What we do as a community today will affect what type of life future communities will get to live in. We hold the key to our future and so with that we must all learn to take care of everything around us. If we can all do this, then the world we got to experience will still be here for future generations when we are not.
Analysis: Each picture above is related to a poem I read by Celia Berrell. The first picture represents our world of production is seen as something the helps all of us. While it does produce the things we need in our every day lives, at what cost does it benefit us? The air is being polluted as you are reading this. Berrell states “Sustainability is the key to our future quality of life” as a summary of her poem “Town and Country Air.” The second picture shows a large crowd of people in a city. This helps depict what Berrell was talking about in her poem “Peace by Piece.” The overall summary of this poem is that we can not survive on our own. In order to live we need to help each other. Although it is a picture of a crowd of mostly strangers, those strangers are the same people who can help you throughout your day. Whether it is help with directions, or they have a job that helps your apartment or house keep electricity and running water etc. You never know the occupation of a stranger you see walking down a sidewalk, but we all need each other to. make life work. The third picture shows a plant growing in a road through the concrete. This was my favorite poem I read by Celia Berrell. The summary of the poem is that life can grow and thrive anywhere that meets its needs. A flower can grow through a crack in the concrete or in a field with other flowers. This is what makes all kinds of life unique and special. We, as humans, can also thrive in places where we shouldn’t neccesarily be able to. Just like this flower.
Application: Celia Berrell and her poems on Environmental topics create this very definitive picture in your head and makes you think about all these different things and how you can help change or appreciate what is in front of you. Her simple but powerful. combination of words took me away to this imaginative place where I could see exactly what I was reading. She is one of the best writers to do this and she is someone who should be more widespread because of the messages that are hidden in-between the lines of each poem.
