Here at The New Sincerest, I’m very excited to announce a new regular series. You’re now listening to Ecopunk, a music and talk show program aiming to highlight the intersection between the arts and environmental perspectives. Ecopunk will air on Thursdays from 12pm-1pm on KHOI Story City/Ames, except for the last Thursday of each month, and will be archived here on this Substack.
I’m your host, Connor Ferguson. I am a creative writer based out of Ames. My work largely considers the intersection of urban environments, natural environments, and human environments in relation to queerness, cultural criticism, and mysticism.
For Ecopunk’s inaugural episode, I am very happy to introduce Eleanore Tisch, a peer of mine in the MFA in Creative Writing and Environment program at Iowa State University. Eleanore Tisch is a poet and educator, born and raised in Chicago. She has a BA in Writing & Literature from the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University, and an MA in Education Foundations, Policy, and Practice from the University of Colorado at Boulder. She is currently working towards an MFA in Creative Writing and Environment at Iowa State University, where she is exploring the neurologic and philosophical relationships between language, the brain, and the body. Her chapbooks, Salad Box Poems and Water : Write : Wave can be found at Bottlecap Press and Dancing Girl Press, respectively. Her work also appears in The Sonora Review, Ghost City Review, and Door is A Jar.
In this episode, Eleanore reads two poems inspired by her recent studies in language acquisition and the form of the sestina, discusses how performing on stage influenced her work as a poet, reflects on the importance of embodiment, and much more!
Song Selections:
“Another Brick in the Wall, Pt. 2” - Pink Floyd
“Daydreamin’” - Lupe Fiasco ft Jill Scott
“Just A Girl” - No Doubt
“Anthems for a Seventeen Year Old Girl” - Broken Social Scene
“Sink Florida Sink” – Against Me
“Polite Company” – Rainbow Kitten Surprise
“Four Winds” - Bright Eyes
“Summer Skin” - Death Cab for Cutie
About Ecopunk
The title of the program comes from its definition as a literary genre: Ecopunk is a subgenre combining science fiction with themes of sustainability, conservation, and reparation; it explores how humans can symbiotically and respectfully interact with the environment and adapt to climate change. Ecopunk is also a design aesthetic that embraces a positive outlook on the future. While the definition does relate it to fiction as a genre, I think it’s a philosophical concept that can be applied to any creative work, since it champions the imagination of a better world in our current climate crisis.
Each week on Ecopunk, I will invite a locally based creative to come onto the show to discuss their craft, how philosophical perspectives on the environmental imagination informs their work, and how the arts can connect and collect our community. After our conversation, the guest will curate a selection of music that is conversation with their craft.
Ecopunk is produced in collaboration with KHOI’s partnership with the BeWild/ReWild program, a loosely-knit group of volunteers with a passion for wildness, reconnecting with the natural world, and curiosity about what lifestyle changes are necessary for us to live within the bounds of sustainability. Here at Ecopunk, we invite you to imagine a better, more sustainable world through the arts.
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