“Great Salt Lake is a poem, a parable, a presence among us – just as we are Great Salt Lake with saltwater running through our veins,” said Terry Tempest Williams, who is one of the many poets that have come together to create “irreplaceable,” a book of poetry rooted in spreading awareness about the Great Salt Lake’s deterioration.
The book is a ballad of appreciation for the lake and all of the many ways that its relationship to our state is symbiotic. Nan Seymour, the book’s composer, announced it on her website giving credit to the 66 poets representing over 400 voices that took part in its curation.
The Lake is the Center
The poem’s genesis was enacted when visitors began to notice its rapid decline in water level. Aside from this, due to the lake’s industrial surroundings, toxins have been leaked into the water and by proxy, the toxins are being swept into the air which endangers society as well as the inhabitants of the lake. “338 species depend on Great Salt Lake for their survival,” Williams wrote, “the Great Salt Lake is on life support. We cannot look away.”
The book’s opening piece, written by Seymour, tells the story of a child falling in love with the lake and its beauty. It is a chronological tale of how the lake came to be a presence in her life, and her desperation in the urge to maintain its grandeur.
“Great Salt Lake was always the center, not the periphery; a creator, not a commodity. May we turn our hearts and faces towards her irrevocably,” she said. She then opens the poetry section of the book with a work of her own: “The Invocation.”
The poems are told from a variety of different perspectives, all people who have a desire to protect the lake in its hour of need. A choir of 66 people who see the importance of its presence and infinitive health banded together to create a statement that has been bound together into this book. “Poetry is a call to pay attention,” Seymour wrote, “we believe in poetry’s power to transform a culture of apathy and disdain into one defined by reverence for life.”
Every Voice Counts
This collection of praise features the stories of hundreds of sixth graders, bird-watchers, scientists and Indigenous people alike. Although they each shade the lake with a new lens, bringing emotional stories of its encapsulation of their lives, their one commonality lies in their devotion to returning the Great Salt Lake to the place of reverence that it once was.
The book’s foreword, entitled “Making Waves” ends with a blanket profession of appreciation for this body of work and all of the voices that it represents.
“’Irreplaceable’ is a prayer. May these poems, line by line, called forth and curated by Nan Seymour, not only move us to act powerfully on behalf of Great Salt Lake, but remind us of the power of prayer in times of drought, especially in drought, to bring forth rain,” Williams wrote.
In an interview with SLUG Magazine, Seymour responded to the question of why she is celebrating a dying lake.
“We do it, because she’s still here. She’s still vital and alive,” she said.
Seymour is using the reach that a book like “irreplaceable” has to encourage others to get involved and to draw attention to a problem that has been so often ignored.
This set of poems serves as a reminder that the Great Salt Lake is not to be taken for granted. This book is a recording of stories from all of the lives that the lake has touched and has inked them into one profession of love and admiration for it. It is a chorus of hope for the future of the lake as a landmark and a cry for the people who can do something about it to listen.
To support this group of human beings advocating for one of the great beauties of our state, be sure to read “irreplaceable” online at irreplaceablepraisepoem.org, or pick it up in print.
