Are You Solarpunk Without Knowing It?

a hopeful vision of the future where nature, technology, and community thrive together. Letter Six {Seeds of Poetry}

“If we want change, or good fortune, or solace, we have to create it for ourselves.”
― Becky Chambers, A Psalm for the Wild-Built

Hello, I’m Alix, an earth-centered poet, artist, and creative coach. Subscribers can enjoy weekly letters filled with seasonal rituals, creative essays, and poetry prompts that really get you writing. Expect reflections on eco-mysticism, gentle rebellion, and the deep magic of paying attention. Paid members get access to all my work, including live writing circles, early access to retreats, and deeper community.

Curious? Click subscribe and let’s get started…

Visions of another kind of future

I've been reading Becky Chambers' Wayfarers series - I'm on the fourth and final book, so I've been fully immersed in her world for a couple of months now.

Chambers first came to my attention through her novella A Psalm for the Wild-Built, a speculative science fiction story about a tea monk and a robot raised in the wild. The book is philosophically poignant, calm, and quietly radical in its hopefulness. It’s not utopian, exactly, just a good future. A real-feeling, possible future.

The Wayfarers series shares that same hope, though it’s more complex and nuanced in its moral and ethical explorations. Both series use gender-inclusive and gender-expansive language and ideas. Chambers has an extraordinary mind for imagining alternative realities (and species and cultures) and tracing their real-life implications, with all their mixed blessings and challenges. I’m continually impressed by her capacity for both theory and empathy. Her writing has led me to reconsider some of my views on AI, technology, and earth-centered spirituality.

At their core, her books are about change (inevitable change) and how we might meet it with imagination and optimism, rather than fear, grief, or avoidance.

Has anything you've read lately shifted your perspective on the future? I'd love to know.

solarpunk art

A few years ago, I encountered a term I hadn’t heard before: Solarpunk.

Solarpunk is a vision of the future that embraces technology in ways that are life-giving and nature-affirming. Think: cities covered in moss and solar panels, flying cars, wind turbines, eco-centric architecture, community gardens, decentralized energy grids.

Earthships and Soft Cars

It reminds me of the Earthships I visited once in Taos, NM while on a writer’s retreat. Earthships are real-life, hobbit-like homes made of recycled glass and mud, warmed by greenhouse gardens and protected by walls of earth. They are visually incredible and I was completely enchanted.

(I have a dream to build (or ya know, facilitate the building of) an eco-retreat much like the Earthship community, but here in New England somewhere. If you are someone with connections or skills in this area, please reach out!)

Photos I took of the Earthships in Taos

I love it when ideas that feel fictional start to infiltrate our reality! Years ago, I stumbled across an interview on the Colbert Show with an architect and urban designer named Mitchell Joachim. In it, he was talking about the idea of creating “soft cars” that could easily and safely pass each other on the street, and even touch without any issues.

Joachim is the co-founder of Terreform ONE, a radical design company working to redesign urban spaces through ecological and biotechnological innovation. Projects like the Fab Tree Hab, propose "growing" homes by guiding tree growth over scaffolds, creating living structures that integrate seamlessly with nature. He is so cool! You can watch his discuss his current projects here.

These are the kinds of projects and experiments that really make me feel hopeful about our possible futures, plus they’re just really cool, no?

What kind of future architecture, tech, or design have you stumbled across that made you think: yes, more of this?

Fab Tree Hab

Shaping our own imaginations

What I’ve learned, often the hard way, is that my imagination will spiral into apocalypse if I don’t actively steer it elsewhere. Our powerful creative minds can be terrifying if left to run wild through dystopian landscapes, but they can also be powerful engines for joy, problem-solving, and for resistance.

(If you're interested in the deeper intersections of science fiction, activism, and authors like Octavia Butler, I wrote a longer essay on that here → Science Fiction & Social Justice.)

Our minds are incredibly attuned to patterns and we are a myth-making species. Religion is one way we do that. But so is art, and poetry, and speculative fiction.

When we change the stories we tell about ourselves, we change who we are becoming.

My Substack grows the most through word of mouth, so if this spoke to you, it would mean the world to me if you could share it to your Notes or with a friend who’d love it too!

Creative Solarpunk prompts

Journaling Prompts:

• What are three elements of a future you’d actually want to live in?

• How has your relationship to technology or the environment changed over time?

• When you imagine the world 50 years from now, what do you most hope is different, and what would it take to begin that change now?

• Where does your mind tend to go when you’re feeling uncertain about the future? What helps you reorient?

Poetry Prompts:

• Write a poem set in a solarpunk future. Describe a moment of quiet joy.

• Use the voice of a non-human narrator to speak about change and adaptation.

• Write a “letter from the future” to your present self, describing the landscape, values, and rhythm of life.

• Try a speculative haiku: three lines to capture a glimpse of a just, beautiful, strange future.

Pick one of the journaling prompts and share your answer in the comments - I’ll be reading and responding! Or post your speculative haiku to notes and tag me! Let’s scatter tiny seeds of hope together.

Live Zoom Writing Workshop, May 17th!

Saturday, May 17th will be our next writing sessions for paid subscribers! (the following one will be on May 24th) We will meet over Zoom at 4pm Eastern and read and write some poems! If you’d like to join us, you can upgrade to paid for just $5/mo or $50/year and you will get a separate email with the Zoom link before the call.

(if you’re reading this on the app, you will need to copy/paste this link to upgrade: https://alixklingenberg.substack.com/subscribe as it’s not possible in the app because of exorbitant fees that apple and google require)

with joy and grounded optimism,

Alix

PS: If you’re a founding member, you can schedule a free 1-1 creative coaching call with me once per year- just send me a message or reply to this email! <3