Edited by Luisa A. Igloria, Aileen Cassinetto, and David Hassler. Paloma Press & Poets for Science, 2025.
Originally envisioned as a companion to the first U.S. National Nature Assessment and now to the work of The Nature Record, The Nature of Our Times: Poems on America’s Lands, Waters, Wildlife, and Other Natural Wonders gathers 210 voices from the arts, ecology, academia, and Indigenous communities across North America giving witness to how nature shapes our lives and how we can shape the future. Winner of the 2026 American Legacy Book Awards and Finalist for the 2025 Foreword INDIES, The Nature of Our Times is a shared initiative, bringing together the joint efforts of Paloma Press, Poets for Science, The Nature Record, and Wick Poetry Center at Kent State University. In his Foreword, Dr. Phillip Levin, Director of The Nature Record, writes: “What these poems share is a willingness to pay attention. And that attention is not passive. It is a form of care. A choice to stay in relationship with a world that is changing, but not yet lost.”
Luisa A. Igloria is the author of Caulbearer (Immigrant Writing Series Prize, Black Lawrence Press, 2024), 14 other books, and four chapbooks, and lead editor of Dear Human at the Edge of Time: Poems on Climate Change in the United States (2023). Originally from Baguio City, she makes her home in Norfolk, Virginia where she is an Eminent Scholar, University Professor, and Louis I. Jaffe Endowed Professor of English and Creative Writing at Old Dominion University. She also leads workshops for and is a member of the board of The Muse Writers Center. Luisa is the 20th Poet Laureate of the Commonwealth of Virginia (2020-22), Emerita. During her term, the Academy of American Poets awarded her a 2021 Poet Laureate Fellowship.
Aileen Cassinetto is a 2021 Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellow and a Yerba Buena Center for the Arts awardee, recognized for her work in building regenerative and equitable communities through poetry. A former Poet Laureate of San Mateo County, California, she co-founded Paloma Press and co-edited Dear Human at the Edge of Time: Poems on Climate Change in the United States (2023), a literary companion to the Fifth National Climate Assessment (NCA5).
David Hassler is the Bob and Walt Wick Executive Director at Kent State University’s Wick Poetry Center. With Poets for Science founder Jane Hirshfield, he and the Wick Poetry Center have led the Poets for Science initiative since 2017. He is the author or editor of ten books of poetry and nonfiction, and co-author of articles on poetry, technology, and healing in the Journal of Palliative Medicine, the Journal of Technology and Teacher Education, and the Online Journal of Issues in Nursing. His awards include Ohio Poet of the Year, the Ohioana Book Award, and the Carter G. Woodson Honor Book Award.
