Artemisio Romero y Carver
MAPS
Poetry and Digital Collage - 2020
About the Artist: Artemisio is a Chicane artist, poet, and organizer. She is a Steering Committee member at Youth United For Climate Crisis Action (YUCCA), a nonprofit working to combat environmental racism. YUCCA works to educate voters and mobilize communities, in pursuit of a just and livable future. Artemisio’s art pursues those same goals. Her visuals have been shown at the Zolma Lofton Gallery, The Napa Valley Museum, and Warehouse 508, among others. Her writing has appeared in publications that include Rigorous Literary Journal, Inlandia Literary Journal, Tumbleweeds Magazine, and Magma Poetry. Artemisio is also Santa Fe’s Youth Poet Laureate.
* if you require a screen reader to read the poetry, please contact us at info@groundswellclimatecollective.com and we can email you an accessible PDF!
Tell us a bit about this work.
This work is a poem is centred in the topics of environmental racism and private property, which then inspired a digital collage that pairs with this piece.
How has the Climate Crisis impacted you, your family, or your community?
My home state New Mexico is home to Permian Basin; the world's single largest and cheapest oil field. Nationally Chicane people's like myself are much more likely to live near polluters and breathe polluted air.
What do you think we need to do now to address the Climate Crisis? Feel free to share any ideas, solutions, hopes, dreams!
The single largest challenge our society faces is the climate crisis. We have less than 10 years to avert a full ecological collapse. That kind of shift will only be possible if we can also move past the racial violence, social injustice, and disregard for human life that make large scale pollution possible. We need to start treating environmentalism as an intersectional issue, because environmental injustice is so often predicated in, and contributes to racial injustice. The protection of our environment, and the protection of BIPOC peoples, is a unified goal.
How do you see the world in 30 years if we've dealt with the Climate Crisis?
I hope for a future that is sustainable and just. I want to see communities trapped in generational poverty, able to thrive and live. I want to see solar panels and windmills, instead of fracking wells. I want to know that there will be generations after my own.