2025 Tulane Earth Day Festival Art Winner
The Tulane Earth Day Festival has selected Tulane student Remi Bass as the winner of written submission of the festival's art competition.
The mission of the festival, which was held on April 16 and included live music, food vendors, events, and student competitions, is to inspire sustainability and environmental awareness within the Tulane community both by creating meaningful experiences and by celebrating student achievements.
Author Benjamin Morris, whose work has included Coronary; Hattiesburg, Mississippi: A History of the Hub City; and Ecotone, judged the competition and had this to say about Bass' winning submission: "In her beautiful poem 'We Are All Ki,' Remi Bass asks us to consider how the language we use to describe earth can more readily connect us to that earth. Full of vivid imagery and clear, unadorned language, her poem describes the sensory beauty of spring with rich detail and a subtle music to her lines. I can't think of a better piece to mark Earth Day this year."
We Are All Ki
by Remi Bass
"In the English language, a human alone has distinction while all other beings are lumped with
the nonliving "its."… With full recognition and celebration of its Potawatomi roots, might we
hear a new pronoun at the beginning of the word, from the "aaki" part that means land? Ki to
signify a being of the living Earth." - Robin Wall Kimmerer in "Speaking of Nature"
Time moves and we move with it
Whether or not we'd like it to stop
And the earth spins on ki's axis
While nature's seasons set up shop
I wave a warm goodbye to winter
with the sun along my side, cause
it is spring and nature is blooming
golden daffodil fields full of pollen
to nourish honey bees
nourish crops we sit back and eat, cause
time does not stop
Dancing through your hair, enveloping silk strands,
ki does not stop to wait for a sign
to analyze, ki simply flows, finding
space when there is none,
gliding through mulberry terrains
where cardinals sing their sweet songs
And when you can't hear birds sing, just know they're not far!
They've only traveled with the seasons to the sun's beating heart,
If you listen to the stillness, you'll hear their wings when they fly
wisping waves in the sky, or in a tree just nearby
Soon they'll return
to lofty perches, fern fields
when the sun's back in sight
and wind surges without yield
and this cycle will go on without a care for divine
timing and grace—for Ki's very essence is sublime
