P084 Beloved Water Body

The life of Great Salt Lake is inseparable from our own.
 
We gather to bear witness to her beauty. We gather to grieve. We gather to create beacons of possibility. We gather to increase our tenderness towards brine shrimp, microbialites, and winged citizens of the air. We gather to carry each other through spells of despair. We gather to revere all that is vital and alive...
We continue to honor a great intelligence deserving of legally defensible personal rights, as we sing back to a ever-singing and sentient entity.
 
Nan Seymour, Great Salt Lake Vigil

Poet, teacher of writing, and community activist Nan Seymour lives near Great Salt Lake, which is in peril, as are inland saline seas around the world—from climate change but also from human generated polution and environmentally unsustainable practices which threaten their existence. 

Dams on tributary rivers divert flow of water to the lake, which is shrinking. Sequestered toxic chemicals from industrial farms and industry which have settled on the lake bottom create dust storms of pollution as the lake recedes. Wildlife are forced to leave this habitat which is on the North American flyway for migratory birds.

Beginning in January 2022 Nan Seymour has spearheaded a daily vigil for the lake, corresponding to the seven week period of the Utah State legislative session. 

The vigil began in 2022 as one woman, Nan, living in a trailer on Antelope Island, supported by fellow writers and friends. It has grown in number, voice, and action to include other writers, fellow citizens, scientists,  environmental groups, Indigenous voices, and occasional voices from abroad who have written about this vigil which is less a protest movement than a determined community statement of intent to save the lake.

n 2024 the vigil "walked the waves" around Utah State capital building, morning and evening, sometimes joined by law-makers.


Irreplaceable, a collective long poem of over 500 voices which has resulted from the vigil will be published in 2024.

coming in 2024, Beloved Water Body, poems by Nan Seymour

Nan's first book of poetry, Prayers Not Meant For Heaven, was published as a chapbook by Toad Hall Editions in 2021. You can order it from the publisher.

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