Wake of Our Waving Sea: Great Salt Lake Anthology 2024
Wake
/wāk/
The track left by a moving body.. a track or path left
“There were others who came here. A father and a child. The child bounded through tall grasses looking for birds. The father waved the child on and said, ‘Go complete your life.’ The child, beaming in excitement, took a moment to appreciate the birds flying overhead. And the father, far out of earshot, said to himself, ‘You’ve completed mine.’”
-- Excerpt from Talons, Beaks & Feathered Beasts by Rory Donahoe
Hold a vigil beside (someone who has died).
“The breathing ocean, the beating heart of the forest, the digesting mountain bellies. I couldn’t bear to come home and watch the lake die. I couldn’t bear for it to die alone. Now the days of my vigil are endless yet numbered.
Now I am stucco’d to a chair beside the lakebed, watching, waiting, listening.”
-- Excerpt from Weren’t We the Salt in the Lake? by Laura Summerfield
Emerge or cause to emerge from a state of sleep; stop sleeping.
“Watch the reformed
immortal body take new breath
the sweat of every collective head gathering
from temple to chin added
until the spirit of this tired body
Rises.”
-- Excerpt from Great Water as Body by Lesley Hart Gunn
Sea
/sē/
A great body of salt water that covers much of the earth
“Water will know me when it leaves just to return,
when its knee aches and it misses mountains
like fruit juice, parents, and familiar fear.”
-- Excerpt from Agua Not Fresca by Laura Summerfield
The SLCC Community Writing Center works with Great Salt Lake Collaborative (GSLC), a Solutions Journalism collaborative of more than a dozen Utah organizations working together to share stories about Great Salt Lake and ways to protect our city’s dying namesake. In hopes of creating a tangible gathering space for community members to reflect over the contingent loss of Utah’s Great Salt Lake, the CWC invited writers and artists to be a part of this year's Lake as Legacy/Lake as Future 2024 Great Salt Lake Anthology, Wake of Our Waning Sea. There were over 50 submissions regarding the crisis surrounding the Great Salt Lake, thus including photographs, poems, and narratives from various community members.
The SLCC Community Writing Center is proud to announce the publication of this year’s community anthology. This incredible piece would not have been possible if not for the talented community members who were so creative and so vulnerable with their submissions. Thank you to everyone who submitted and congratulations!
The CWC named this anthology in regards to the pieces included within this anthology embodying that of wake for the Great Salt Lake. It is a remembrance of our very own sea, of the disassembled soul that once was a large part of Northern Utah. It is a communal vigil for our framework, our namesake. It is a call for an awakening of our diminishing home. As our days with the Great Salt Lake begin to dwindle, we will need one another's experiences, memories, and feelings to lean on. In doing so, we can earnestly ask for a saving, for a reawakening.
This work invites readers to a place of solidarity: a place to celebrate, mourn, and seek out further refuge together. The emergence of our sea lies within our unity throughout this process.
If we are able to face the grieving process alongside one another, we will be able to honor our namesake with honesty, and join together in deciding what it is we need to do to find further protection over our home.
The SLCC Community Writing Center and the Great Salt Lake Collaborative celebrated the Wake of Our Waning Sea Launch and Gala on Thursday Sept. 19, from 6:30-8:30 pm at Patagonia (2292 Highland Dr., Salt Lake City, UT 84106). We invited each artist, writer, photographer, and creator who was published in the anthology to join us in honoring their beautiful work. Patagonia generously provided refreshments as well as a space for the gala, and Lisa Bickmore, Utah's Poet Laureate, emceed the event.
Everyone who was published in "Wake of Our Waning Sea" will be given a copy of the anthology. We have handed out copies to the creators who attend the gala, however we will have more available for those who were published at the SLCC Community Writing Center (210 E 400 S #8). If you were unable to attend the launch, please stop by the center to receive your copy!
The works below are a collection of long-form stories about the Great Salt Lake that were submitted for publication in the anthology.