“Brute Neighbors” Gives Artists’ Views of Urban Nature, Environmental Issues
The city may seem an unlikely place to seek answers to the deterioration of our natural environment–until you look between the covers of “Brute Neighbors: Urban Nature Poetry, Prose & Photography.”
Published last spring by the DePaul University Humanities Center, DePaul Poetry Institute and DePaul University Institute for Nature and Culture, the anthology includes the work of 50 Chicago poets, photographers and essayists who create art at the intersection of urban and wild. The introduction to this collection points out that scientists can work on nature as seen from the outside “as pattern or bold fact,” but it is artists who can tell us “how our nature interacts with nature” to help us find a sustainable urban ecology.
The book launched to favorable reviews from the Chicago Reader and other publications. “People were surprised at how accessible it was–most people are afraid of poetry. We had a couple of different launch readings and had really good turn-outs. The copies got gobbled up,” says Chris Green, a poet and an instructor in the English department, who co-edited “Brute Neighbors” with Liam Heneghan, professor of environmental science and co-director of DePaul’s Institute for Nature and Culture.
Students enrolled in the DePaul Publishing Certificate course aided in the editing, designing, publishing and publicizing of the book.
To request a free copy of the paperback edition from a very limited supply, contact aperson@depaul.edu.
Visit bruteneighbors.com for an electronic edition of “Brute Neighbors.”