SHELBURNE FALLS — Franklin Land Trust will kick off National Poetry Month with a poetry reading at the Shelburne-Buckland Community Center, located at 53 Main St., on Saturday, April 1.

The reading, dubbed “Plein Air: Poetry of Nature, Environment and Place,” will run from 6:30 to 8 p.m. and will feature a lineup of poets whose work explores themes of ecology and placemaking.

The poets include Romeo Romero, a Florence resident whose work focuses on themes of belonging, diaspora and spirituality, and whose second poetry collection will be released this year; Abbot Cutler, who has published three chapbooks, including “Say Dance, Say Night” with Northfield-based Slate Roof Press; Rebecca Hart Olander, who teaches writing at Westfield State University and Amherst College, and works with poets in the Maslow Family Graduate Program in creative writing at Wilkes University; and Nathan McClain, author of two collections of poetry who teaches at Hampshire College and serves as poetry editor of the Massachusetts Review.

“From Franklin Land Trust’s book club, which recently concluded its close reading of Jenny Odell’s ‘How To Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy’ in early March, to our April 1 poetry reading, all of the land trust’s recent offerings have had a focus on attention and re-engagement in our environment,” Sebastian LaMontagne, outreach and development associate with Franklin Land Trust, said in a statement. “These upcoming events require us to slow down and observe the natural world around us in a deeper, more meaningful way, teaching us to become practitioners of the art of noticing.

“Franklin Land Trust conserves land,” LaMontagne continued. “But we also want to engage with this process of meaning-making, by which artists, writers and scientists understand and interpret our entanglement in the ecological community that surrounds and sustains us.”

Later in the spring, the land trust will continue its “art of noticing” theme by hosting four programs playing on the same ideas: a spring ephemerals walk guided by naturalist Cesi Marseglia; a series of nature journaling workshops taught by artist Lori Austin; a workshop led by geologist Nicolas Miller exploring the North River in Colrain; and a continuation of the Franklin Land Trust’s book club in collaboration with Arms Library in Shelburne Falls, now focusing on author Ed Yong’s book, “An Immense World.”

“All of these offerings beg the question: What do scientists, artists and writers have in common?” LaMontagne continued. “I think the answer is that they are guided by curiosity, and tasked with maintaining a keen attention to the world around them. They are all practitioners of the art of the noticing.”

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