5 ECO-POETS ON THE ENVIRONMENT In her appearance before Congress, sixteen-year-old Swedish environmental activist Greta Thunberg submitted the most recent scientific report of the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in lieu of a prepared statement. Much of the subsequent hearing involved discussion about why it’s important to “listen to the science.” Closer home it is heartening to note the efforts made by climate advocates like Licypriya Kangujam and Ridhima Pandey leading India toward environmental activism. Their energy urges me to contemplate what I as a poet or my Indian English poetry community can do to fast track this concern for our environment. Can Delhites enjoy a relaxed evening walk without a mask? Can Mumbaites encourage an afforestation drive in Aarey Colony? They say that poetry changes nothing. I guess that's true only with non-living things. Otherwise, the plant wouldn't have withered when slammed with slangs. Poetry does change like motes change colour in the fall air. In this blog, I am trying to activate the space of climate poetry the way many poets around the world have already started. Climate change is real, and it does have a psychological impact on people whose moods inform creative expression in many ways. So how should we administer poetry to take charge of this grim environmental condition that is endangering our future generations? To begin a change, we must first initiate it and embody it. Can we then, as poets, collectively work to farm a deeper consciousness amongst schools children? Can we reject the rigidity that an agenda-driven poem is not a poem enough? Can we also retain the dignity of language customary to literary practice? The answer is, we can. Where do we begin? In this article, I introduce to you poetry that advocates for a safer and greener tomorrow—climate poetry. Our poetry, I believe, should amplify climate advocacy that our young environment activists Licypriya Kangujam and Ridhima Pandey are fighting for. 5 ECO-POEMS ON OUR ECOLOGY A LANGUAGE OF CHANGE by David Sergeant As late capitalism writhed in its internal decision concerning whether to destroy Earth’s biosphere or change its rules’– Kim Stanley Robinson We’re sat by the ocean and this�could be a love poem; but that lullaby murderer�refuses each name I give it�and the icebergs seep into our sandwiches,�translated by carbon magic. And even this might be�to say too much. But the muse of poetry�has told me to be more clear – and don’t,�s/he said, for the love of God, please, screw things up.�Ambiguous, I didn’t reply; as we’re sat�by the ocean and I could make it�anything you wanted, for this moment�of speaking – but we have made it�something forever. Together�the weather�is a language we can barely understand;�but confessional experts detect�in the senseless diktat of hurricane�a hymning of our sins, our stupid counterpoint.�Love has served its purpose, now must be�transformed by an impersonal sequester�of me into the loves I will not see,�or touch, or in any way remember.�Perhaps it was always like this – take my hand,�horizon – ceding this land. In this poem, the speaker sits by the ocean and wrestles with mixed feelings of love and horror at its power and potential to destruct. Sergeant is the author of two poetry collections and has published additional work in Poetry Ireland, Poetry Review, and Rialto X by Imtiaz Dharker Hand shaking on the stop-cock, she looks�at the X, the warning cross, the water-tap unlocked, its padlock cracked.�Breath hacks in the throat, Check your back. Turn it on and an anxious mutter swells�to thunder in the plastic bucket. Don’t spill it. Fill it to the top. Lift to the hip, stop,�balance the weight for the dangerous walk home. Home. Don’t lose a drop. From the police chowki across the track�a whistle, a shout. Run. Don’t stop. Don’t slip. A drag at the hip. Hot, hot underfoot. Water slops�up and out in every direction, over the lip, over her legs, a shock of cool, a spark of light.�With her stolen piece of sky, she has taken flight. Behind her, the shouters give up. She puts down�the bucket. The water stills. She looks into it, looks up to where the blue�is scarred with aimless tracks. Jet-trails cross each other off�before they die out, a careless X. Another in the Guardian series, “X” hums with a nervous energy that makes climate change feel personal. Dharker is a Pakistan-born British poet and author of at least six books. She is also the recipient of the Queen’s Gold Medal for her English poetry. LOVE POEMS IN THE TIME OF CLIMATE CHANGE by Craig Santos Perez Sonnet XVII I don’t love you as if you were rare earth metals, diamonds, or reserves of crude oil that propagate war: I love you as one loves most vulnerable things, urgently, between the habitat and its loss. I love you as the seed that doesn’t sprout but carries the heritage of our roots, secured, within a vault, and thanks to your love the organic taste that ripens from the fruit lives sweetly on my tongue. I love you without knowing how, or when, the world will end— I love you naturally without pesticides or pills— I love you like this because we won’t survive any other way, except in this form in which humans and nature are kin, so close that your emissions of carbon are mine, so close that your sea rises with my heat. Published in the New Republic earlier this year, these two sonnets reimagine both love and the act of professing it through the language of landscape and climate change. Perez is a poet from the Pacific Island of Guåhan/Guam and the co-founder of Ala Press. He is the author of two poetry collections, the winner of the 2011 PEN Center USA Literary Award for Poetry, and is now an Assistant Professor in the English Department at the University of Hawai’i, Manoa. UTILOMAR by Kathy Jetñil-Kijiner I dreamt of a dead shark we were at a family party my mother asked me to check the oven and when I opened it there it was massive, gray leathered skin, jaw open like a metal trap I dreamt of eating a shark When I woke up I met my mother in the hallway I told her about my dream how it felt foreboding together we went outside and that’s when we found the world flooded Water everywhere Our neighbors wandering outside morning daze on their faces homes inundated, families evacuated sent to sleep on classroom floors at the nearby elementary school My family is a descendant of the RiPako clan, the Shark clan known to control the waves with roro, chants it was said that they turned the tides with the sound of their voice they sang songs to sharks encircling their canoes, we were connected to these white tipped slick bodied ancestors carving through water we would never have eaten them In the Marshall Islands I teach Pacific Literature Together we read the stories our ancestors told around coconut husk fire So what are the legends we tell ourselves today? What songs are we throwing into the fire . . . what are we burning? And will future generations recite these stories by heart, hand over chest? Maybe In one legend It’ll start by saying in the beginning was water water from the sea that flooded our homes our land and now our only underground reservoir what we call a fresh water lens shaped like the front of an eyeball, nestled deep in our coral feeding on rainwater it watches us, burning and angry it is vindictive it poisons us with salt leaving us dry and thirsty Over 6,000 miles away from my island home is the US state of Minnesota I’ve read that Minnesota, like the Marshalls, is simultaneously drowning and thirsting In 2007 24 Minnesota counties received drought designation While 7 counties were declared flood disasters In 2012 this time 55 Minnesota counties received drought designation while 11 counties declared flood emergencies Climate scientists warn of intensified heat this heat threatens Minnesota’s great North Woods a forest nearly 12,000 years old scientists predict the mixed hardwood and conifer forest will follow glaciers and retreat north by as much as 300 miles in the next century I imagine a hardwood tree ancient and weary, dry untangling its roots from the soil before heaving its tree trunk body to a new home where it will forever mourn its roots In this legend, identify the theme, the moral the message what have we learned . . . have we learned anything? What is the archetype of a monster and a hero? can they be one and the same? Here’s another story of a tree On one of our atolls known as Kwajelein There was said to be a flowering tree at the south end that grew from the reef itself a utilomar tree it was said its magical white petals fell into the water and bloomed into flying fish On a lazy Sunday my cousin and I lay side by side on my aunty’s veranda, sun drying our skin, together we dreamed an organization dedicated to young people like us who leapt blind and joyful into water willing ourselves wings to fly who dared to dream of a world where both forests and islands stay rooted who believe that this world is worth fighting for I still nightmare of dead leather sharks But I’d rather dream I’d rather imagine our/next generation their voices turning the tides how our underground reservoir will drink in their chants how they will speak shark songs and fluent fish how they will leap petal-soft beautiful unafraid into the water before blossoming to fly Jetnil-Kijiner is a Marshallese poet and performance artist who in 2014 was asked to address the UN Climate Summit in New York City. Many of her poems, including “Dear Matafele Peinem,” discuss the threats that climate change poses to the Marshall Islands. In “Utilomar,” the poet articulates how climate change affects both her island home and the mainland. I AM THE TRAGIC MASK by Ruth Padel Water Wars Do you know where you are in the Milky Way? Look for the spun bud of the whirlpool, the last struggle of the water butterfly in toxic red mud: all that is left of your river when they extract the aluminium which will connect your SIM card with the world. What Lies Beneath Riffle through dying corals in your bed, all the things you don’t want to know that you know – serpents in your tide, witchcraft under the floor, the lustre of hidden fox-foam sluicing in from the underworld to rotating cylinders, nine concrete piers bedded on river chalk, and the rough silk steel radial gates of Thames Barrier. Water Museum You stockpile umbrellas and radiators, a heap of mad grins reminding you of so many school mornings with fog pearls, breath pearls, wetting your regulation scarf as you walk from the station on small, red bricks, the outside trim of a pink cement pavement past ice-sheaths of reeds round a swan’s nest. And the swan’s bride, a tissue ballerina, haunting the mist. Water is Company You close your eyes and wait for the augury, sing to the brook while the balancing self flies out and away like a bird from a broken branch. Your hands shake like rags in a gale. With a hollow sound like a breaking pot, wind whips the lake into bubble-froth soap-suds, blocking the drain. Water Connects You hear the plink of stalactites, i-Tunes in sea melt, leaks from the conscious mind, a gush from the pericardial sac and swollen-jelly heart. Now it’s the water-closet, the one truly fortified space where the orator prepares his lecture undisturbed because reality is not quite real enough till pushed through the mesh of words. Ruth Padel FRSL FZS is a British poet, novelist and non-fiction author, in whose work "the journey is the stepping stone to lyrical reflections on the human condition" The above poems by Ruth are a reflection on this 2013 climate change report
