The Mouth Is Also a Compass
The Mouth Is Also a Compass
by Carrie Bennett
Released October 15, 2024
The Mouth Is Also a Compass is a dystopian expedition that holds space for hope. An environmental disaster forces one woman to set out on a solitary expedition to find the Last Ice Age. During her journey, the speaker experiences both calamity and conciliation as she begins to understand the scope of her responsibility to the natural world. How do we create our own ecology of survival in an increasingly unpredictable climate? How can we cause less harm to the environment and animals we share the air, land, and water with? These poems explore our ethical duty to protect by subverting the traditional exploration narrative in which the explorer discovers/conquers/exploits with a feminist ecopoetic perspective that emphasizes consciousness and care.
Carrie Bennett is the author of three previous poetry collections, biography of water, The Land Is a Painted Thing, and Lost Letters and Other Animals. She holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop and currently teaches writing at Boston University. She is a Massachusetts Cultural Council Artist Fellow and lives in Somerville, MA with her family.
