Donna Henderson - Poet and Psychotherapist
From Donna:
'The Holocene' in the title refers to our current geologic epoch, which began after the first Ice Age about 12,000 years ago, and is characterized by warm but relatively stable temperatures. Also known as "The Anthropocene:" the epoch of humans. Humans who are largely responsible for the increasing climate instability that may well mark the end of the Holocene and the Anthropocene, both.
The insight that emerged in writing the poem was how our race toward "progress" shapes also the way we approach trying to mitigate the price of that progress. Whereas hope, I think, lives in slowing down so as to come back into our bodies, and in living and responding to all of nature from there: from inside-out, not outside-in.
We Moved So Fast Through Our
Last Days in the Holocene.
Our worry hurried us, whether or not we knew.
We tried to slow ourselves, to break the spell of rush.
But even that felt urgent in the imminence
and so we hurried to.
How we tried to outrun our undoing.
How trying hurried it along.
Interview with Donna Henderson
