Mountain Artist in Residence Talk: Remain

“Remain” is a forthcoming interdisciplinary poetry and performance project by WVU Libraries 2026 Mountain Artist in Residence poet L. Renée that will draw on archival records of mountaintop removal mining to ask a haunting and urgent question: After a mountain is stripped, blasted, displaced, and “reclaimed,” what truly remains? Working with environmental, geological, and community archives from the West Virginia & Regional History Center, Renée will examine how both human and non-human life endure, and are altered by, violent ecological rupture. Through four original poems created using erasure, contrapuntal, found, and ekphrastic forms, “Remain” will transform archival materials into layered acts of witness and remembrance. This public program will feature a short film documenting Renée’s creative process, a live performance of the poems, and a visual display of the works, followed by a Q&A. Held during National Poetry Month and Earth Week, the event invites audiences to consider archives as living spaces of memory and poetry as a tool for care, resistance, and collective meaning-making. This collaborative WVU Art in the Libraries and WVRHC program is sponsored by the Appalachian Community Development Association and The Oakland Foundation.