Writing the Land: A Project of NatureCulture

Writing the Land is a collaborative outreach and fundraising project for land protection organizations. Through our anthologies, poets help raise awareness of the importance for land conservation.

Our project partners with various nonprofit and environmental organizations to coordinate the “adoption” of conserved lands for poets. Each poet is paired with a land usually for about a year, and they visit the location to create work inspired by place. This project emphasizes the importance of individual connection to land and place, and optionally includes event-sharing experiences of poets reading on behalf of conservation and environmental awareness—inspiring others to visit or donate toward the protection of these conserved lands of all types including conservation easements, ranches, farms, ecosystems, habitats, sanctuaries, and wilderness preserves.

Poems created for Writing the Land are available to the land protection organizations indefinitely for use in their media and outreach, and through the anthologies produced. Poets retain their individual copyrights for their work.

Writing the Land is an attempt to honor nature and our relationships within it in a way that is as equitable and transparent as it is deep and entangled. As poets and advocates, we declare our intention that the scope of this project be as inclusive—to humans and places—as we hope the mantle of protection that land trusts offer can be. Our work in writing the land will never be complete but rather gains strength, depth, beauty, and energy from a multitude of voices.