A night of poetry celebrates ‘The Nature of Our Times’
Published 10:30 am Tuesday, January 20, 2026
A standing-room audience filled the Land Trust Building last week for a spirited local launch of “The Nature of Our Times,” a new poetry anthology reflecting on America’s lands, waters and wildlife.
The Jan. 13 event marked the first local appearance of Washington’s new Poet Laureate, Derek Sheffield, whose poem “Ornithology 101” is included in the book.
Other visiting poets included Ching-In Chen, a Chinese American writer, community organizer and educator at University of Washington Bothell, and Lara Volski, a poet and PhD candidate in the University of Washington School of Environmental and Forest Sciences program.
One of the book’s three editors, David Hassler, executive director of Kent State University’s Wick Poetry Center, also traveled to the island. While on Vashon, he led a poetry workshop, arranged by Vashon Artists in Schools, with Chautauqua Elementary School fifth graders.
At the book launch, Hassler shared a poem written by a student during the workshop, then led the audience in creating a crowd-sourced poem, a pledge of awe and inspiration to the natural world.
Also speaking and reading at the event were local poets Ann Spiers, Margaret Roncone, Sandra Noel, Catherine Johnson and Mary G.L. Shackleford.
Phil Levin, an islander and board member of the Vashon-Maury Land Trust, introduced the evening. Levin is the director of The Nature Record, which is conducting the first national scientific assessment of U.S. lands, waters and wildlife.
Levin, a conservation scientist whose career has included leadership positions at the University of Washington, The Nature Conservancy and NOAA Fisheries, was appointed in 2023 by the Biden-Harris administration to lead the U.S. National Nature Assessment, a study of America’s ecosystems.
When the two-year-old program was dismantled by the Trump administration in January 2025, Levin and his colleagues continued their work under a new, nongovernmental framework.
“The Nature of Our Times,” a project of The Nature Record in partnership with Paloma Press, Poets for Science and the Wick Poetry Center, he said, was published in recognition that scientists alone cannot solve America’s environmental woes.
“There are things we can measure — the number of salmon returning up Shinglemill Creek, warming oceans, shifting species ranges — and that kind of knowledge really matters,” Levin said. “But there’s another way of knowing that doesn’t fit neatly into charts or computer models. It comes from standing still, from listening, and that’s where poetry lives. Poetry changes what we notice, what we value and defend.”
Find out more and purchase the book at palomapress.org/the-nature-of-our-times.
