Of lyric proportions: poetry and the genres of climate-change communications

Since the publication of Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus’ ‘The death of environmentalism’ in 2004, environmental strategists and communications experts have debated about how best to frame climate change for a general public. While some affirm the power of dystopian messaging, others advocate for more positive visions of the future. Yet consistent across viewpoints has been a virtually unquestioned investment in narrative and, of late, in an epic mode of narrative storytelling seen as best suited to portray this massively-scaled environmental crisis. But why epic? Why not lyric? This essay surveys a growing overlap between the fields of climate-change communications and genre studies to make a case for the role that lyric poetry might play in representing and responding to climate change. The essay argues that lyric’s generic distinctions and historical entailments uniquely position it to engage local and global climate impacts, and to provide alternatives to logics of personhood and the public sphere that have historically undergirded cultures of environmental degradation.