SPEECH DRIES HERE ON THE TONGUE: Poetry on Environmental Collapse and Mental Health, eds. Hollay Ghadery, Rasiqra Revulva and Amanda Shankland

 

The poets in this book explore the complex relationship between environmental collapse and mental health, inviting readers to consider the unprecedented personal impacts of the crisis. The looming thread of environmental collapse has brought with it a sense of impending annihilation and intensified a mental health crisis that was made crueller by a global pandemic that revealed our fragile nature. As writers, we use our words to navigate this turmoil, alleviate our own suffering, and inspire others. Through speaking and writing, we reclaim power, not only over our own narratives but in how we shape our collective futures. As we continue to grapple with the overwhelming realities of ecological destruction, these poems invite us to listen, to feel, and to respond. In this moment of profound loss, we are reminded that the voice can be a force for change, a means of healing. Though the weight of environmental collapse may sometimes silence us, we are called to speak. Even as speech may dry on the tongue, it gives us a thirst for change. (“Editor’s Preface”)

I’m intrigued by this new collection, SPEECH DRIES HERE ON THE TONGUE: Poetry on Environmental Collapse and Mental Health, edited by Hollay Ghadery, Rasiqra Revulva and Amanda Shankland (Guelph ON: The Porcupine’s Quill, 2025), a poetry title that provides a complexity of literary response to “the relationship between environmental collapse and mental health,” and the precarity through which we currently live. “whereupon I join Lear and his Fool / on the blasted heath,” writes London, Ontario-based writer and speaker Jennifer Wenn, in the poem “Fire and Flood,” “and while the erstwhile king howls / at the gale and deluge I cower, / uselessly, / looking for a sign, [.]” There are multiple pieces echoing Wenn’s particular sentiment, seeking a sign or marker of hope through the gloom, with other pieces that rage their appropriate rage through the storm, or even a spiraling into a dark swirl of hopelessness. As Toronto-based poet,editor and translator Khashayar “Kess” Mohammadi begins the poem “Movement XVI”: “that dark resignation to loss. how long to run after joy and just / find construction cones scattered. I take out the trash and who / knows maybe I’m resistant to pesticide. some relief comes in / the form of needles. I’m defeated by numbers. It simply won’t / happen.”” Sometimes the only way to respond to a crisis is to write through it, providing a clarity of thought and potential action, and this collection, put together as the result of a public call, provides an assemblage of first-person lyric narratives by some two dozen Canadian poets that shake to the roots of mental health and climate concern, providing both observational comfort and clarity to their sharpness. The collection includes contributions by Brandon Wint, Jennifer Wenn, Conal Smiley, Concetta Principe, Dominik Parisien, Khashayar “Kess” Mohammmadi, Kathryn Mockler, Tara McGowan-Ross, D.A. Lockhart, Grace Lau, Fiona Tinwei Lam, Aaron Kreuter, gregor Y kennedy, Maryam Gowralli, Elee Kraljii Gardiner, Sydney Hegele, Karen Houle, Nina Jane Drystek, AJ Dolman, Conyer Clayton and Gary Barwin. There’s a precarity to these lyrics, these lines, one that writes directly into crisis,

These are poems that want and crave hope, but can’t always get there, perpetually searching through the fog for a clarity. How might we get there? “My best friend tells / me all life on earth shares a single common / ancestor, with a name.” writes urban Mi’kmaq writer and multi-disciplinary artist Tara McGowan-Ross as part of the poem “if I had a son I would call him Ben,” “My therapist explains that / my obligations change as something gets closer.”

Rasiqra Revulva, Cephalopography 2.0

NAUTILIDAEISM

nacreous, chambered isolation

ya mawlana antas-salam.

buoyant in bondage,

wa minkas-salam.

spiralled aortal filtration

wa ilayka yarji-us-salam.

shearing radula: cascading sight

hayina rab-bana bis-salam.

aloft, enclosed and boneless,

wa adkhilna daras-salam.

From “queer femme writer, multimedia artist, editor, musician, performer and SciComm advocate: Rasiqra Revulva comes the full-length debut Cephalopography 2.0 (Hamilton ON: Wolsak and Wynn, 2020), an explosive follow-up to her two chapbooks of “glitch-illustrated poetry” Cephalopography (Toronto ON: words(on)pages press, 2016) and If You Forget the Whipped Cream, You’re No Good As A Woman (Toronto ON: Gap Riot Press, 2018). Rife with drawings, computer-generated illustrations and texts, puzzles, prayer, visual poems and a variety of writing forms, the work in Cephalopography 2.0 is energetic and wonderfully playful, vibrant and performative. Revulva is, as the back cover attests, “as much a passionate celebration of cephalopods in all their plurality and finery as it is a collection of poems exploring human identity and experience through the lens of these marine animals. These experiments with traditional poetic forms such as ghazals, tankas and cinquains, as well as more contemporary forms, make poems that are uniquely and beautifully composed.” And a cephalopod, by the way: think of such as a squid, octopus, cuttlefish, or nautilus. As her poem “CEPHALOPOGRAPHY” offers: “A body that aches (of water). A body that moults (of salt). A body that mistakes / (of flesh). A body that revolts (without). A body that splits (of water). A body that / swarms (gestalt). A body that exits (the water). A body that transforms (at fault).” Hers is a joyous performance, a book-length suite of revelations on conditions of living, one clearly shared by humans and cephalopods alike.

Listen to the multiple engagements and play within a poem such as “BREEDING GROUNDS: / EMTPY CALORIES,” that reads: “so much depends / upon/ the Greenland shark / grinding / its toxic jaws / into / a / gaunt polar / bear [.]” As she discussed her debut chapbook, which held an earlier iteration of this current project, in an interview with Canisia Lubrin at The Town Crier in 2017:

My debut chapbook Cephalopography is a multi-form exploration of various axes of human identities and experiences through the lens of cephalopods and their environments; aka an illustrated celebration of my imaginary best friends. It is composed of multiple poetic forms, an insert of interactive puzzles, and a series of glitch-art cephalopod illustrations/reverse ekphrases. Dive in, and don’t forget to breathe.