SALT LAKE CITY — Lisa Bickmore, Utah’s Poet Laureate, will lead a discussion of Terry Tempest Williams’ book ‘Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place.’
The free event will be hosted by the Great Salt Lake Collaborative and the Weber County Library. The community discussion will take place on September 18 at the county’s Main Library.
We interviewed Bickmore ahead of the bookclub discussion to understand how the lake informs her own work as the governor-appointed advocate for literature and the arts.
Bickmore’s interest in the Great Salt Lake
According to Bickmore, some of the people she knows made her aware aware of the crisis facing the lake as it continues to shrink through.
“My friend Joel Long is a poet and a photographer and he just really loves the lake,” said Bickmore. “Watching his love of the lake unfold in these forms for me was a way of becoming more aware of what was happening.”
Bickmore was also inspired by the Utah poet Nan Seymour. She considered how she could connect her projects with Seymour’s work.
“She calls herself a lake-facing writer,” said Bickmore. “She does writing workshops and she keeps vigil for the lake during the legislative session.”
Seymour has worked for several years to compose a collaborative poem called Irreplaceable: A Collective Praise Poem for Great Salt Lake. More than 400 people have contributed over 2,200 lines of poetry.
Bickmore suggested making a chapbook, or booklet, of the poem, which is in production. Terry Tempest Williams, the author of ‘Refuge,’ wrote the foreword for the book.
Bickmore’s work as Utah’s Poet Laureate
Utah Poet Laureate Lisa Bickmore working on a Great Salt Lake project at Davis High School in December 2023. (Photo courtesy Lisa Bickmore)
After she became Utah’s Poet Laureate, Bickmore began a micro-press named Moon in the Rye. She has been working with writers across Utah to publish their work in small chapbooks. Additionally, she applied for a fellowship through The Academy of American Poets, which allowed her to expand her focus to the Great Salt Lake. She has visited a number of Utah schools to encourage students to write and create art about the lake. The work will be produced as broadsides (a large sheet of paper used to distribute news or make announcements) and displayed in the schools’ communities..
“The idea is that you create a civic project that will engage people,” said Bickmore of the fellowship. Bickmore said that she has worked with children from every age group. She said it is interesting to see the children connect to the project’s topic.
“Sometimes the project has shifted away from Great Salt Lake proper into watersheds. But I think water issues in the west are all related to each other,” said Bickmore. “I feel like it was in the spirit of the [project] to go where the people are who wanted to do the project and work with [them] to think about the land and water that surround them.”
‘Refuge’ and the Great Salt Lake
Tempest Williams’ book ‘Refuge’ draws attention to the Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge. However, it is connected to the entire water system of the Great Salt Lake.
“She was one of the first people … to really deeply focus in on that landscape and tell a personal history … of her connection to it,” said Bickmore.
According to Bickmore, the book allows the reader a look into the narrator’s experiences at the bird refuge.
“I look forward to looking at how she does that in language,” said Bickmore. “That book has been enormously important in terms of raising awareness.”
While Bickmore said writing can not solve the situation at the Great Salt Lake, she believes it can motivate people to get involved.
“One of the things poetry is really good at is helping people see something either for the first time, or seeing it in a new [way] and feeling connected to it,” said Bickmore.
Bickmore hopes to draw out those connections in her own work on the lake and at the Sept. 18 bookclub.
