Bengali Shimmers
by Nuri Bhuiyan
The environmental justice crisis is one of the greatest challenges of our time. Bangladesh is central to discourse in this movement, as it is one of the most heavily impacted by climate change and a wide range of environmental issues.
The first poem speaks to struggles of identity of climate refugees. The second poem came out of experiences with climate depression and ecological amnesia. Climate depression describes the feelings of despair that come with awareness of the enormity of climate change. As a result, people turn to a sort of “cognitive dissonance,” where they force a separation of our behavior and mind, in order to keep living the way they do. The third poem emerged out of frustration during a recent trip to Bangladesh from December to January 2019. Central to Bangladesh’s birth and early years as a newly independent country was a passion for romanticism, natural beauty, and poetry, but over the years, worsening social and environmental issues have rendered its people underserved and widespread disenchantment.
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