Poet Patrick Donnelly is leading a program for advanced poets starting August 7 through the 12th at the Frost Place in New Hampshire. Insectopedia is the recipient of a Special Award for Extending Ethnographic Understanding from the Society for Humanistic Anthropology. In addition to Orion, his essays have appeared in Best American Essays and Granta. He is the author of In Amazonia: A Natural History, which received the Victor Turner Prize in Ethnographic Writing. Hugh Raffles teaches anthropology at The New School. Francesca went to Brooklyn to talk with Hugh Raffles just before the awards ceremony. They gave him the top prize in their 2011 book awards.
And the editors at the environmental literary journal Orion thought so, too. Raffles communicates that wonder and appreciation in eloquent discursive style in his book. And the more he learned, the more his wonder and appreciation grew. Writing his award-winning book INSECTOPEDIA was partly a way for him to overcome his discomfort with bugs.
That was once also true of anthropologist Hugh Raffles. That doesn’t stop many of us from recoiling when we encounter them. They might actually constitute more than 90% of the animal kingdom. The number of insect species is somewhere between six and ten million. US Fish and Wildlife under threat: The US Fish and Wildlife service, so crucial to nabbing smuggler Yoshi Kojima, may itself become endangered, due to the budget deal just concluded in Congress. Jessica Speart writes about wildlife law enforcement, endangered species and the environment for magazines ranging from National Wildlife to Mother Jones.
She also tells the story of the man who hunted Kojima down and brought him to justice: Ed Newcomer of the US Fish and Wildlife Service. Jessica Speart followed one of them, Yoshi Kojima, AKA the Hannibal Lector of the conservation world. This illegal trade provides a lucrative living to the smugglers who supply the goods to their insect-obsessed clients. It also is contributing to the extinction of species that pollinate our fruits and vegetables and are key indicators of environmental stress. Of this market, the illegal butterfly and insect trade brings in $200 million dollars annually. The illegal wildlife trade brings in 15 to 20 billion dollars a year, selling huge numbers of animals belonging to endangered species to collectors. Jessica Speart talks about WINGED OBSESSION: THE PURSUIT OF THE WORLD’S MOST NOTORIOUS BUTTERFLY SMUGGLER Hugh Raffles talks about his award-winning book INSECTOPEDIA and poet Patrick Donnelly tells WV about the poetry program at the Frost Place.
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