nan seymour

THURS, NOVEMBER 7, 2024   |  7:30-9:00 pm MDT

We will explore through Nan how we can express gratitude and support for our Great Salt Lake in constructive and poetic ways.

WHERE:

Home of Ed and Kristen Iversen
3582 Oak Rim Way
Salt Lake City, UT 84109

Thanks to Kristen and Ed for hosting this gathering in their home.

THE CONVERSATION:

The newly published book irreplaceable proclaims 8 principles of keeping vigil. We’ll discuss these values, exploring ways in which they pertain to the work of replenishing the lake as well as what it could look like to live more deeply into them in daily life.

1. Peaceful uprising in action and word. We demonstrate to make our love for Great Salt Lake visible.
2. Devotion: We turn our hearts and faces towards the lake.
3. Presence: We offer our calm, steady presence.
4. Reparative Returns: We uplift Indigenous leadership and seek to repair harms done.
5. Bodily Sovereignty: We seek legally defensible rights for the lake to live, flourish, and be replenished.
6. Behold the Future: We work to benefit those who are coming, human and beyond- human kin.
7. Love Specifies: We cultivate tender regard for all life forms, landforms, and water bodies.
8. We belong to the earth and each other. Belonging is inherent and cannot be earned, sold, or bought.

We will conclude our time together by creating a new collective poem for Great Salt Lake, a unique offering of praise from those assembled at this gathering. Please bring pen and paper to use in response to writing prompts.

ABOUT NAN:

Nan is a lake-facing poet, Great Salt Lake celebrant, and vigil keeper.

She created the practice of River Writing in order to foster voice and authentic connection. This community-held writing practice is designed for anyone willing to pick up a pen. Everyone is invited. A recent PBS documentary highlights River Writing as a method of repair for what is broken in our relationship with the natural world.

Her debut poetry collection, prayers not meant for heaven, was published by Toad Hall Editions in the summer of 2021. Nan’s story lake woman leaving, a modern myth, was awarded the 2022 Alfred Lambourne prize by Friends of Great Salt Lake. In the summer of 2023, Nan was honored by Salt Lake City Mayor Erin Mendenhall with a Mayor’s Artist Award. As poet-in-residence on Antelope Island, Nan led day-and-night vigils on behalf of the imperiled Great Salt Lake throughout the 2022 and 2023 Utah State legislative sessions.

During her weeks on the receding lake shore, she assembled irreplaceable, a collective  love letter containing over 400 lake-facing voices. This polyphonic praise poem is now a book, recently published by Moon in the Rye Press. The ode is a community cry for the full restoration of the lake and ecosystem.

The 2024 winter vigil featured twice daily demonstrations of love for Great Salt Lake at the Utah State Capitol. Advocates of all ages walked with waves in silence every morning and celebrated the lake’s species with jubilant singing and dancing each evening. Over 1200 people participated in 68 demonstrations during the session. As the 2025 session approaches, Nan and her accomplices at Making Waves Artists Collaborative are preparing to keep vigil at the Capitol again.

Nan continues to advocate for Rights of Nature, legally defensible personal rights for ecosystems, including Great Salt Lake. Her work gives voice to their inherent right to live, flourish, and evolve in natural way. The words emerge from a devotion to repairing the breach between humans and the rest of the sentient, singing earth.

EXPLORE BEFORE WE MEET:

Reading List From Nan

• Purchase the new book irreplaceable, a beautiful collective praise poem to Great Salt Lake composed by nan seymour with a forward by Terry Tempest Williams
• Listen to irreplaceable, a collective praise poem to Great Salt Lake composed by nan seymour
• The Bear River Massacre: A Shoshone History by Darren Parry
• The Bluff Principles for the Colorado River. This carefully articulated vision from Indigenous leaders also applies to Great Salt Lake.
• New World Coming, an Anthology edited by Alastair Lee Bitsóí and Brooke Larsen
• River Republic, The Rise and Fall of America’s Rivers by Daniel McCool
• Bloodtide by Eli Nixon
• Not Hope, But Possibility- The Literature of Restoration, an essay by Deena Metzger

Suggestions From Nan:

CLICK HERE TO WATCH THE RECORDED ZOOM CONVERSATION

• Click on the Zoom link above for either last month’s recorded conversation (if the event date has passed) or the live conversation now. If you are participating in the live conversation keep reading.
• When you are connected you will either be waiting in a lobby and will let be in shortly or you will immediately be able to see other participants. Please make sure that you are muted and that your video is on if you choose to have it on. (Love to see and hear you live, but we’ll take curious lurkers also.)
• If you can’t hear the host, me, or others, find your settings and make sure you have a working microphone and speaker selected. OR maybe the problem is on my end so please let me know if it is.

ZOOM ETIQUETTE: 

• Please mute your microphone before entering and when you are not speaking so noises are not heard by everyone else.
• If you are going to multitask—not recommended—or wander around a lot, please turn off your video and make sure you are muted. No one wants to be distracted by you eating or using the loo.