Her Deepest Ecologies: The Podcast

I have seen Claudia Castro Luna perform at the Skagit River Poetry Festival and have admired her poetry for a long time. Her latest book, Cipota Under the Moon, which came out last May “scores a series of poems as an ode to the Salvadoran immigrant experience in the United States.” I have always appreciated how ecopoetics and social justice appear seamlessly in Claudia’s work and in this conversation I wanted to talk more about how she addresses beauty, place, and community. She has served as both Seattle Civic Poet and Washington State Poet Laureate and is currently a Writing the Land poet. Enjoy this conversation!

Claudia Castro Luna is an Academy of American Poets Poet Laureate fellow (2019), WA State Poet Laureate (2018 – 2021) and Seattle’s inaugural Civic Poet (2015-2018). She is the author of Cipota Under the Moon (Tia Chucha Press, 2022); One River, A Thousand Voices (Chin Music Press); the Pushcart nominated Killing Marías (Two Sylvias Press) also shortlisted for WA State 2018 Book Award in poetry, and the chapbook This City (Floating Bridge Press). Her most recent non-fiction is in There’s a Revolution Outside, My Love: Letters from a Crisis (Vintage). Born in El Salvador, Castro Luna arrived in the United States in 1981. Living in English and Spanish, she writes and teaches in Seattle on unceded Duwamish lands where she gardens and keeps chickens with her husband and their three children.

https://www.claudiacastroluna.com/

https://poets.org/poem/farmers-market

Resources mentioned:

Writing the Land project

https://www.seattle.gov/arts/programs/civic-poet

https://www.humanities.org/program/wa-poet-laureate/

All episodes were recorded at Jack Straw Cultural Center in Seattle, WA and edited at my farm in the Skagit Valley called Harmony Fields. Thank you to sound engineer Ayesha Ubayatilaka.

We have four fascinating conversation in season one that will be released weekly-ish, starting on April 22nd on Substack!

Please send any comments or questions to: [email protected]

NOTE: All podcast episodes are available for free, no paid subscription required.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit herdeepestecologies.substack.com

I loved talking with my dear friend Jodie Buller about her work at the White Eagle Memorial Preserve, a Natural Burial Ground at Ekone Ranch. She spends part of her time near me in western Washington, but one of her many roles is as Cemetery Director on the other side of the mountains in Goldendale, WA. This was an extra special conversation since Jodie and I used to host a radio show for our local station (KSVR, 91.7) in the years before she took on this important work. I appreciated what I learned about the process of natural burial, how ceremony is created, and the healthful ways we can think about and prepare for death.

Jodie has been a friend of Ekone since 2008, and stepped into leadership of White Eagle Memorial Preserve in 2013. She works with families directly to walk through end-of-life choices and burial logistics, and supports White Eagle’s Stewards, hosting tours, burials, and special events. Jodie lives part-time in the White Eagle Cabin in the Ekone Valley, and part-time in a wee cabin in Skagit Valley. Her background in outreach work for the Skagit Valley Food Co-op informs her passion to introduce White Eagle to communities throughout Washington and Oregon, with presentations and workshops on natural burial. She is a founding member of the Conservation Burial Alliance, and part of the Washington Funeral and Oregon Funeral website team, creating public service websites which provide resources for family and community directed death care.

Ekone Ranch

White Eagle Memorial Preserve

Resources mentioned:

Corpse Care: Ethics for Tending to the Death

Western Pine Beetles & Forests in WA

All episodes were recorded at Jack Straw Cultural Center in Seattle, WA and edited at my farm in the Skagit Valley called Harmony Fields. Thank you to sound engineer Ayesha Ubayatilaka.

We have four fascinating conversation in season one that will be released weekly-ish, starting on April 22nd on Substack!

Please send any comments or questions to: [email protected]

NOTE: All podcast episodes are available for free, no paid subscription required.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit herdeepestecologies.substack.com

In Episode 2, I talk with Kevin Craft about wilderness, writing, and his new role as a poet-in-residence for the Terminus Project in Olympic National Park. A complete bio is below as well as links to things we discussed in our conversation.

Kevin Craft lives in Seattle and directs the Written Arts Program at Everett Community College. His previous books include Solar Prominence, selected by Vern Rutsala for the Gorsline Prize from Cloudbank Books (2005) and Vagrants & Accidentals, published in the Pacific Northwest Poets Series by the University of Washington Press (2017). He is the recipient of fellowships from Artist Trust, The Camargo Foundation, The Bogliasco Foundation, PLAYA, and MacDowell, among others. In 2022 he was an Artist in Residence at Olympic National Park. Editor of Poetry Northwest from 2009 – 2016, he now serves Publisher and Executive Editor of Poetry NW Editions.

Terminus Project: Olympic National Park

Kevin’s Poem “The Cameron Glacier: Cantata for a Melting”

More of Kevin’s work here. His third book of poems, Traverse, will be coming out with Lynx House Press this in 2023.

Additional notes: Reporting form for the Western toad.

All episodes were recorded at Jack Straw Cultural Center in Seattle, WA and edited at my farm in the Skagit Valley called Harmony Fields. Thank you to sound engineer Ayesha Ubayatilaka.

We have four fascinating conversation in season one that will be released weekly-ish, starting on April 22nd on Substack!

Please send any comments or questions to: [email protected]

NOTE: All podcast episodes are available for free, no paid subscription required.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit herdeepestecologies.substack.com

Welcome to the first episode of the first season of the podcast! It was a true honor to have Valerie Segrest as our first guest. Below you will find her complete bio and links to the various projects she mentioned in our conversation. Our talk covered a lot of ground, from food sovereignty to mothering to the various ways we spend time in and connect with nature. Enjoy!

Valerie’s Bio:

For more than a decade, Ms. Segrest has dedicated her work in the field of Nutrition and Human Health Science towards the efforts of the food sovereignty movement and catalyzing food security strategies rooted in education, awareness, and overcoming barriers to accessing traditional foods for Tribal communities throughout North America. By utilizing a community-based participatory research approach she has worked to organize tribal community members in grassroots efforts towards strengthening sustainable food systems that are culturally relevant and nutritionally appropriate.

Ms. Segrest earned her Bachelors Degree in Human Nutrition and Health Sciences from Bastyr University and her Masters of Arts Degree in Environment and Community from Antioch University. Over the years she has earned several certifications in advanced herbal studies and has extensively researched the subject of historical and traditional food and medicine systems of the Coast Salish tribes of Western Washington.

Her career began as faculty for Northwest Indian College and as a Cooperative Extension Agent for the Traditional Foods and Medicines Program. In 2009, she worked with her community to launch the Muckleshoot Food Sovereignty Project, a grassroots effort toward increasing access to traditional foods within the Muckleshoot community by identifying food resources, developing and implementing culturally appropriate curriculum focused on traditional ecological knowledge. Over the span of ten years, Ms. Segrest has co-authored several publications including the books “Feeding the People, Feeding the Spirit: Revitalizing Northwest Coastal Indian Food Culture” and “Feeding Seven Generations: A Salish Cookbook”.

She was a Kellogg Food and Community Fellow at the Institute of Agriculture and Trade Policy. This afforded her the opportunity to share the efforts of the food sovereignty movement with audiences locally, nationally, and globally. Further, she made several important connections to the broader good food movement and key leaders in that arena. In 2019, she was featured in the Women’s Day Magazine, the Food Network Magazine, and the J.Jill “Inspired Women” Campaign.

Valerie aims to inspire and enlighten others about the importance of a nutrient-dense diet through a culturally appropriate, common-sense approach to eating.

Tahoma Peak Solutions

https://www.tahomapeak.com/

Native Plants and Foods Community Portal

https://nativeplantsandfoodsportal.org/

Chef vs Wild on HULU

https://press.hulu.com/shows/chefs-vs-wild/

Muckleshoot Food Sovereignty Project

All episodes were recorded at Jack Straw Cultural Center in Seattle, WA and edited at my farm in the Skagit Valley called Harmony Fields. Thank you to sound engineer Ayesha Ubayatilaka.

We have four fascinating conversation in season one that will be released weekly-ish, starting on April 22nd on Substack!

Please send any comments or questions to: [email protected]

NOTE: All podcast episodes are available for free, no paid subscription required.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit herdeepestecologies.substack.com