SAD, ANGRY AND FUNNY: MY EXPERIENCE RUNNING A CLIMATE CHANGE POETRY COMPETITION

In a guest blog, Dr Sam Illingworth, Senior Lecturer in Science Communication at Manchester Metropolitan University, shares his experience of running a climate change poetry competition and explains why he is donating the proceeds to EJF.

All nature has a feeling: woods, fields, brooks

Are life eternal: and in silence they

Speak happiness beyond the reach of books;

There's nothing mortal in them; their decay

Is the green life of change; to pass away

And come again in blooms revivified.

Its birth was heaven, eternal it its stay,

And with the sun and moon shall still abide

Beneath their day and night and heaven wide.

All Nature has a feeling - John Clare

This poem from John Clare was written at the beginning of the 1800s, and yet to me it still speaks very deeply about humankind’s relationship with our planet.

Nature is a living, breathing, beautiful entity – one that talks and communicates to us via babbling brooks, animated animals, and fluorescing flora. The poem tells us that unlike humans, nature is eternal, but is this really the case?

Climate change presents the greatest threat to our species and our planet that humankind has ever faced, and yet to many of us it is something that is ‘happening somewhere else’ or ‘ is real but not a reality to me’. Read the full article on the Climate Justice Foundation website here.

Source: Environmental Justice Foundation

Region: Global