Earth-cool, and Dirty is a collection of nature poems for the Anthropocene.

Author Jacob Lee Bachinger is a student in the creative writing master of arts program in the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences.

In the collection, he contemplates birds and animals, but also plastic bags snapping in too-high branches and yardwork at the end of autumn, and in the poem The Green Man for Dinner, an unexpected guest arrives for a strange reckoning and redemption.

The Snow Tells Its Story

The snow tells its story and tells it

slant across all

it touches: ditches, branches, sidewalks,

fast-filling crevices we did not know

were there, telling

its story of a blessing so white

it is a cold curse, falling

to the grey church,

editing the book of its masonry—

tough, grainy flakes changing

every chapter and verse.

About Jacob Lee Bachinger

Mr. Bachinger lives and works in southern Alberta on the edge of coulees and the Oldman River. He teaches at the University of Lethbridge and has had his poems published in The Fiddlehead, Prairie Fire, Riddle Fence and The Malahat Review, among others. He is currently working on a book about his time in Labrador. He lives in Lethbridge, Alta.

Earth-cool, and Dirty is published by Radiant Press and was released in October 2021.