Review: ‘Speech Dries Here on the Tongue: Poetry on Environmental Collapse and Mental Health’

Writing about the climate and other environmental topics has evolved over the past several decades, expanding from its niche origins in obscure scientific journals to mainstream popular science books and even climate fiction. However, a book of poetry that focuses on climate change is still a novelty. This excellent volumeis a welcome addition to the genre.

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“Speech Dries Here on the Tongue” packs an emotional punch. But although it tackles grim topics – indeed, the phrase “mental health” is often used as a euphemism for “poor mental health” – the poems are not all gloomy. In their excellent preface, the editors explain that “[p]oetry can serve as a space to envision alternate futures.” The 21 poets, writing from an eclectic range of viewpoints, can be despairing and angry as they “grapple with the overwhelming realities of ecological destruction,” but they are just as often meditative or reverent. 

“Even as speech may dry on the tongue, it gives us a thirst for change,” the editors point out.

The title of the book comes from its opening work, “Movement XV” by Khashayar Mohammadi, playing on the meaning of the “DAFFODILS style guide” while grappling with an uncertain future. This is one of the works that examines environmental writing itself. 

Other pieces deal explicitly with mental health issues, such as “bipolar” and “Anxiety” by gregor Y kennedy [sic], or with the human relationship to nature. Many focus on specific environmental topics such as water (like “Be Water” by Grace), soil, or wildfires (as in the poems “Fire and Flood” by Jennifer Wren and “Three Senryu” by Fiona Tinwei Lam). Pieces like “If I had a son I would call him Ben” by Tara McGowan-Ross also tackles our relationship with animals. Of course, poets can never stray from writing about love, and pieces such as “When Finding a Lover in the Anthropocene” by Maryam Gowrallis bring new life to the perennial topic. 

Several poems are featured for each of the poets, giving them a chance to showcase their individual range. In some cases, the poems form a suite; in others, it is a surprise to note that the pieces are by the same poet. The poets are not bound by traditional forms; there are neither sonnets nor any other kind of rhyming poetry in this book. In fact, several of the concrete poems, such as Gary Barwin and Elee Kraljii Gardiner’s “Riven Museum”, blur the boundaries between visual arts and the written word.

For the most part, this choice is a success, although some of the prose poems might work better as flash fiction and a small number are needlessly obscure even in the context of modern poetry. Additionally, the breezy style of the introduction by Karen Houle, while entertaining, is somewhat jarring for this book. However, the beauty of a poetry collection like this is that the reader can browse, meditate in depth, or return many times to those pieces that evoked emotion.

The best way to enjoy the book may be to use it as inspiration. When Brandon Wint, in the poem “Whatever Splits a Raindrop into Fourteen Splattered Gemstones”, writes:

I want the stillness of forests, suppleness of moss a sparrow
nosing shrubs

It is just possible to imagine that this desire may be fulfilled. Indeed, in the book’s title work, the poet exhorts the reader to persist:

Speech dries
Until the end, we
will keep pretending we’re not 
marching for nothing.

Speech Dries Here on the Tongue
Hollay Ghadery, Rasiqra Revulva, and Amanda Shankland
2025, The Porcupine’s Quill, 78pp

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