A five-part series of interwoven poems from a dying parent to her daughter, examining the human capacity for grief, culpability and love, asking: do we as a species deserve to survive? In poems written for the daughter she will leave behind, the dying speaker of Dear Specimen examines grief, culpability and love, asking: what value can we ascribe to our lives, and do we as a species deserve to survive? In so doing, she creates a climate-conscious critique of the human species, our search for knowledge and meaning, our capacity for greed and destruction, in a five-part series of interwoven poems. When the speaker hints at the climate crisis in a bedtime story she tells her grandson, we feel the peril he may face alongside him. Dear Specimen is an extended love letter and dire warning, not only to the daughter its speaker leaves behind, but to all of us.
