Daring to Hope with Elizabeth Glenn-Copeland

Today I'm delighted to be joined in conversation by Elizabeth Glenn-Copeland. Having dedicated her life to exploring how eco-activism can be weaved into artistic practice in an effort to facilitate societal change. She draws on myth, indigenous wisdom & collaborations with science through a lens of current events, utilising story-telling, song & poetry to convey powerful messages that speak straight to our souls. 

We discuss the impact of eco-anxiety, low grade fear & complex PTSD that is affecting so many of us who are deeply connected to the environment, & how importantly we need not be blinded by the popular climate doomerism, because when we look beyond this narrative we discover millions of people around the world already doing amazing things. 

Elizabeth poignantly encourages us to not falter or give-up, but to remember that the story is still being written, the ending is not yet determined, that we all have the ability to engage in “Active Hope” & come together with collective strength to reframe how we vision ourselves into the world & forge new ways that nurture the earth.

Learn more about Elizabeth

Elizabeth is a writer, theatre maker & arts educator whose career over the last forty years has evolved at the intersection of arts &activism. She has long had a passion for communicating with the animate world that began in childhood high up in the arms of an old weeping willow.

Fast forward sixty years. Elizabeth is offered a writing residency at the Joggins Fossil Institute, a UNESCO World Heritage site on the mighty Bay of Fundy. She jumps at the chance to connect/converse with 300 million-year-old-rock, to go to Stone as supplicant, to fully engage with sea & sand & sky & winged helpers to deepen her connection to the living world.

What emerged was a narrative of the odyssey in poetic form, "Daring to Hope at the Cliff's Edge: Pangea's Dream Remembered". Music journalist, Nick Starring says of the this work: 

“Lyrical, bewildering, heartening, a& unsettling, this work sees an individual voice reckoning with the overwhelming complexity of our present moment.”

Elizabeth lives in Hamilton, Ontario with her composer husband, Beverly Glenn-Copeland.

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Onlythroughart
Website: http://www.elizabethcopeland.ca/

Purchase 'Daring to Hope...': https://chapelstreeteditions.com/book-catagories/poetry/daring-to-hope-at-the-cliffs-edge/

Rock Poem: https://nsadvocate.org/2021/06/26/rock-a-poem-by-elizabeth-glenn-copeland/

Listen to Beverly Glenn-Copeland’s music: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnwmuje1H7edkx3v