UPSTREAM - Mark B. Hamilton

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Résumé :
In beautiful, thoughtful, and sensitive lyrics, UPSTREAM offers an enthusiastic encounter with a winter journey paddling up the Mississippi River. This sequence of meditations follows in the tradition of Basho's Eastern travelogues-as a contemplation of self, history, and our contemporary environment. UPSTREAM gives form to the belief that life, itself, is a relationship with the Earth. Guided by Native Nation cosmologies, this collection captures that complexity of interdependency between one's personal, cultural, and ethical values. Each poem expresses the joy of perceiving the Mississippi River as a living entity, forceful, knowledgeable, and communicating to us through time. The reader experiences an affirmation that our rightful place is here, on this Earth with a river that speaks, if we listen. For additional information about the author, view: www.MarkBHamilton.WordPress.com...

Biographie:
Mark B. Hamilton is an environmental new-structuralist, working with diachronic forms to transform content, adapting from both Eastern and Western traditions.UPSTREAM has been inspired by the Eastern travelogues, especially as written in haibun by Basho, but also by the sensibilities of Native Nation cosmologies. As a personal memoir, it chronicles the paddling of a kayak up the Mississippi, from the confluence with the Ohio River to Wood River, or River Dubois at Alton, Illinois.Mark's eco-poetry volume, OYO, The Beautiful River (Shanti Arts, 2020) and his chapbook, 100 Miles of Heat (Finishing Line Press, 2017), both explore the reciprocity between self, culture, history, and the contemporary environment of the polluted Ohio River. His thoughts and experiences while paddling up the Missouri River, across the Great Plains from Washburn, North Dakota, to Dillon, Montana, are expressed in the eco-poetry volume Lake, River, Mountain (Cornerstone Press, University of Wisconsin, January 2024).Individual poems have been published widely in the U.S., as well as abroad in Greece, Japan, Austria, Germany, and the United Kingdom, with translations into Vietnamese and German. He earned his BA and MA in English & Comparative Literature at San Diego State University, and his MFA at the University of Montana, with extensive work in Literature, Education, American Studies, and Professional Editing. His researched history articles have been published by: The Heritage of the Great Plains, The Bulletin of the Chicago Herpetology Society, We Proceeded On, and History Magazine, with inclusion into the Folk Life Archives, Library of Congress. Additionally, he recently presented an environmental statement, arguing for the urgency of inner activism to counter climate change, at the ASLE (Virtual) Conference, 2021: The Art of Eco-Poetry: A Dynamic Response to the Environmental Crisis, reposted on YouTube.Mark's work has been recognized with awards, honors, literary fellowships, community and academic grants, commendations, and an endowment for wilderness studies, along with university teaching positions. His creative purpose is to alter the Anthropocentric, to shift the paradigm and improve the understanding of our rightful relationships with the Earth-our only home.Please see: www.MarkBHamilton.WordPress.com...