In these perilous times, what can we expect from an anthology of poems related to the climate crisis? A route map out of our troubles? A meeting of minds? A selection of ‘good poetry’, whatever that means? What we know is that these times call for something different. We know it is not business as usual, and yet we don’t quite know what that difference is, and even less how to get there.
Kate Simpson, with Valley Press, has pulled together an anthology of about 50 poets, divided the work into 5 sections – Emergency, Grief, Transformation, Work, Rewilding – and introduced it with a summary of what we are facing in the emergency and her view of the role of poetry.
The work was published on June 8th, before the latest IPPC report, but the excellent introduction is brimming with her commitment to the issue, and an effective summary of what we are facing.
This is followed by her assessment of the role of climate poetry and her perspective on the poems themselves. “This anthology cannot be a solution or a global source of awakening……..But it can do something.”
She argues “poetry is perhaps the most ideal – verging on the most logical – means to visualise, understand and appreciate the full extent of the climate crisis”. Well, this is a bold and contestable claim, but boldness is probably one of the things we need.
The anthology is ambitious in its range of voices and approaches to poetry, with many well-established poets and others much newer to the scene – a scene of course which has had its limitations around inclusivity (like the climate movement itself) on a local and global scale.
If you are looking for consistency or a through argument, you won’t find it in this collection – not surprising perhaps: it’s not where we are in the world, let alone in poetry. The anthology is like being in a crowded room, with many different voices trying to speak.
Kate tries to establish some order by corralling the poems into different sections, but many of them burst out of their classification, and for me, even the classifications seem at times strained. For example, “Work “ makes up a whole section, and while it has some inspiring poems, the relationship of work to climate change is complex, and I am left wondering how revealing? The anthology ends with a strong section on “Rewilding” – here we have coherence, but to me the theme seems insufficient (although important) as a conclusion.
But Kate does capture a great multiplicity of voices in all their wealth and imagination. It surprised me that while many of the poets are obviously committed activists, there are very few poems about the practice of taking action – maybe that is a genre of climate change poetry yet to come.
The anthology is packed with wonderful poetic nuggets – phrases that I would happily have on my wall. For example:
From Sue Riley’s alluring A Polar Bear in Norilsk
if I could feel if I could not feel
if I should not fail fall fear
if snow would come
Or Anthony Anaxagorou’s line in Nautical Almanac:
We’re the only species who understand we will one day die. For now, nothing
wants to know more.
Or Joanna Guthrie’s stark climate-denying lines in Waiting:
We ordered some chairs online.
It was a good year for outdoor furniture.
There were, for me, fewer poems that I would want to read again and again. It is almost as if we, as poets, are able to have important flashes of insight, but not yet able to comprehend the whole.
There are exceptions, of course.
For example, Jemma Borg’s deeply personal Unripe, with its opening line What can I tell my son to help him sleep? One of the moving things about this poem is the strength of connection between two people, in this case a mother and son. There is inspiring work in this anthology on our connection with nature, but to find our way out of this crisis, I do think we are going to have to find new ways of relating to each other as people. Part of this will be acknowledging the huge separation forced on us because of inequality, racism, class and more – locally, nationally and globally. This is no small set of issues, but is counterbalanced by a completely common purpose. In the climate crisis we have a cause that really is in everyone’s interest. There may be structures and motivations that will inhibit a solution, but there really are no human enemies in this cause. I wonder if this will eventually show through in climate poetry; a poetry where it is clear that we have a liking for each other!
Inua Ellams’s gloriously angry Fuck/ Humanity is a poem I would readily return to, showing an emotion rarely seen in poetry, and mastered with great skill in his recent collection.
The poem ends with:
And I am folds over / humbled deep down / reconsidering attempts / at amending our venomous ills / even if it undoes me
It is great that there is an awareness now of climate grief (with a whole section of this collection devoted to it), but we are going to need to feel and handle the full gamut of emotions – climate anger, climate embarrassment, climate fear, climate numbness (a big one for many, and which Kate calls climate complacency), climate boredom, climate denial and more.
The other central emotion is alluded to at the end of Jemma’s poem. Tony Benn (a long-time Labour politician of the left) correctly in my view maintained that this emotion was itself the battleground of any struggle. As Jemma concludes:
What ripens the cone if it is not hope?
No matter what we face in terms of setbacks, can we separate old discouragements from the possibilities of the present and claim a sense of hope in our activities?
The collection is clearly a labour of thought and love, and well worth exploring. It aptly ends with a delicate, subtle poem by Sean Hewitt Leaf, with the final couplet:
For even in the nighttime of life
it is worth living, just to hold it.
Find out more and buy your copy from Valley Press (50p from each sale will be donated to Friends of the Earth).