Photo by Marty Espinola
Writing the Land is a collaborative outreach and fundraising project for land protection organizations. Through our anthologies and individual books, poets help raise awareness of the importance for land conservation.
Our project partners with various nonprofit and environmental organizations to coordinate the “adoption” of conserved lands for poets. Each poet is paired with a land usually for about a year, and they visit the location to create work inspired by place. This project emphasizes the importance of individual connection to land and place, and optionally includes event-sharing experiences of poets reading on behalf of conservation and environmental awareness—inspiring others to visit or donate toward the protection of these conserved lands of all types including conservation easements, ranches, farms, ecosystems, habitats, sanctuaries, and wilderness preserves.
Poems created for Writing the Land are available to the land protection organizations indefinitely for use in their media and outreach, and through the books produced. Poets retain their individual copyrights for their work, but land protection organizations may use the poems in all media.
Writing the Land is an attempt to honor nature and our relationship with it in a way that is as equitable and transparent as it is deep and entangled. As poets and advocates, we declare our intention that the scope of this project be as inclusive—to humans and places—as we hope the mantle of protection that land trusts offer can be. Our work in writing the land will never be complete but rather gains strength, depth, beauty, and energy from a multitude of voices.
Information for Land Protection Organizations
1) Where does the project work?
We work anywhere there are land trusts and other land protection-related groups who want to be part of the project. We will find poets in your area for you and coordinate them. Please see our existing lands on our maps.
2) Is there any cost to the project?
Yes there is an up-front cost which includes a stipend for your poet and can be recouped by proceeds from book sales. This project is about outreach and fundraising to help support the protection of land. The goal is to help you raise money and awareness for the work you do. We create a beautiful book that can be used as incentive donor gifts, board and thank you gifts, and sold or raffled directly to support your mission; and you get wonderful poems you can use indefinitely to show your lands in an artistic light.
3) What do we get?
You can get a book of your own, or be part of an anthology. If your own book, then you decide what it contains. If the anthology, then a 10 page chapter, with more pages for more lands. Either book is then purchased at wholesale. You can then resell at retail, give it away, or otherwise use for your outreach. Your publication contains the poems inspired by your land, and other material you wish to include about your work including photos, maps etc. Starting in 2026 the books will be shorter (5 land trusts instead of 10), in color, and you will get more pages the more land you put in. Matching for the following year’s anthology and for independent books is ongoing.
4) Can we pick our poets?
Yes, you can bring your own poet, choose from a selection of poets (we provide a sample of their work, a photo, and a bio), or you can let us pick—-depending on your preference. Each land you put into the project gets a separate poet.
5) How do we find out more?
Please email to set up a zoom informational meeting. Thank you for your interest.
Information for Poets
1) What does it mean to be in WTL?
Writing the Land pairs poets with protected lands from whenever they are matched (a minimum of a few months) to the poem deadline date, generally the first of January.
The adoption process is: If applications are open, you apply to the program; if accepted we keep your material on file. When a land trust comes into the project we post their land on the map, and email poets in that state (sometimes also surrounding states); interested poets email to let us know they’re interested; we send the land trust your portfolio; the land trust and/or the project decides which poets get which lands. We close applications periodically due to high volume.
Once assigned a land, we ask for 2-3 poems inspired by your adopted land by the deadline. A minimum of 1 of your poems is included in the anthology; you allow the land trusts and the project to use your poems to support their mission of land protection indefinitely, non-exclusively. After the anthology is published, you may of course submit the poems anywhere as the copyrights of all poems remain with the poets.
Benefits vary by year as we work to increase them, and currently include: publication (in the anthology); a free copy of the book; a $100 stipend; sometimes optional possibilities to do other readings for your land trust with associated stipends; the opportunity to buy the book at wholesale and give away or to resell at retail; amenities of the WTL community including occasional newsletter with announcements, preferential inclusion in our events; occasional reading events, collaborative projects such as poems, good fellowship with like-minded poets, and of course the best part is knowing you’re helping protect land.
2) How do I get involved in this project?
If applications are open, please apply to the project by sending an approximately 70 word third person bio, photo, and 3 poems that we can share with interested land trusts (these won’t be posted or published). Please name the files yourlastname-bio; yourlastname-photo; yourlastname-poems (please put all the poems in 1 file); document should be a .doc or .docx and photo should be a .jpg or .png. Thank you for your interest.
3) Can I suggest a land I’d like to be paired with?
When accepted to the project you will be provided a link to suggest a land trust you would like to work with. Please do not yourself reach out on behalf of the project.
Our Team
Past Interns: Thanks Everyone!
NatureCulture LLC
NatureCulture LLC is the parent organization of Writing the Land, a production of Lis McLoughlin. NatureCulture organizes and produces events and anthologies for the creative and environmental communities. All our events are solar powered from an off-grid location in the rural forests of western Massachusetts. Visit us to see a complete list of our services, what we’re hosting now, along with past events.
Our Story
Into My Own
by Robert Frost
Apis by Martin Bridge (cover art for Writing the Land’s 2021 anthology)
One of my wishes is that those dark trees,
So old and firm they scarcely show the breeze,
Were not, as 'twere, the merest mask of gloom,
But stretched away unto the edge of doom.
I should not be withheld but that some day
Into their vastness I should steal away,
Fearless of ever finding open land,
Or highway where the slow wheel pours the sand.
I do not see why I should e'er turn back,
Or those should not set forth upon my track
To overtake me, who should miss me here
And long to know if still I held them dear.
They would not find me changed from him they knew—
Only more sure of all I thought was true.
``````````````````
Before Writing the Land, there was Thinking the Land. Enjoyable, but not quite efficacious. In my off-grid cottage in a mature hemlock forest in western Massachusetts, for years I contemplated the land. And as I walked those wooded acres, feeling Robert Frost's cadences in my hiking feet, I knew that words and land wrote each other. And it occurred to me, that in this way land contributes to its own protection; that land speaks, and further, that Nature poets are trained to hear those voices.
So what does it matter, this conversation, asked the activist in me? In a time when land needs all the help it can get just to avoid being clear-cut or paved over, how can poets help the land that we love protect itself? The answer, as it so often is in Nature, is to cooperate with partners. Land Trusts, as conservers of land, bring our writing into action. By pairing poets with protected lands, we offer ourselves as conduits for the land to speak, to sing, to cry out, to comfort. The Writing the Land project in 2021 was comprised of 11 land trusts, 36 separate lands, and 40 poets helping the voices of the land translate into acts of protection and care. Each 2021 land trust has a chapter in the 2021 anthology, which is offered for sale through the land trusts to benefit the work they do. In 2022 there are 42 land trusts and over 180 poets in 4 anthologies, 2023 also has 4 anthologies, 2024 has 4, and 2025 is forming with 1 complete book for Washington state, 1 in conjunction with partners in New York, and a few other surprises. We currently have over 150 land conservation partners and 350 poets; we are growing every day.
Writing the land is honored to be doing this essential work. We invite you to join us by exploring our website and enjoying the poetry; buying and reading the anthology; donating to your local land trust; enrolling as a poet in our project; or by hiring one of our speakers for your next event (use the form to Contact Us). Thank you for listening, protecting, and respecting the land.
---Lis McLoughlin, PhD; Director of Writing the Land