Nora Hollstein / Connected Archives
INTRODUCTION BY DAPHNE CHOULIARAKI MILNER
As COP26 draws to a close, Atmos brings together nine eco-poems that were performed at the global climate event to help inspire change in the way we think and act.
Earlier this month, over 190 world leaders descended into Glasgow from across the globe to attend COP26, the 2021 edition of The United Nations climate change conference. At the same time, grassroots leaders, activists, organizers and artists gathered in the Scottish city to hold governments accountable for false promises and slow action. Among them are poets who wrote and performed urgent words of hardship and hope to inspire change in the way we think and act towards the natural world.
Here, Atmos has compiled an anthology of poems—with the help of poetry collectives Poets for the Planet and Young Poets Network’s Poems to Solve the Climate Crisis as well as the UNHCR—by wordsmiths like Emtithal Mahmoud and Jérôme Pinel to forge new connections of solidarity and visions of the future.
COP26
By Jérôme Pinel
Waiting for my daughter under a plum tree.
A bench, right by a school.
Across the way, on the grass,
A gardener bending over some weeds.
The rose must seem cruel
Laughing brightly
At his proud and old strokes of trowel
That the city, a step away,
Doesn’t want to see. A crack
Splinters the wall. It is enough.
Even in the grey breath of a rat hole,
The seed opens its wings, green and frail.
Towards a honey sky reaching out.
Under the zebras, the street fissures.
The city needs wasteland
Abandoned territories.
To remember that concrete,
As deep as a fist might push it,
Only balances on a pile of earthworms
Who couldn’t care less
About cement-based rents
About big titles nailed on bricks.
A short power cut
And the sapiens will clamber down
From its tower of light,
Forgetting his money. //
A heart remains, beating blood
Alone in the huge bright night. //
Fallow city. Green city. Empty city.
To refresh your mind.
Far from the noise of advertisements.
And numbers racking up without restraint.
In the rush of traffic jams,
Commuting through moribund sighs
We can sometimes see near a bridge
a shaggy piece of wilderness,
A square of brambles answering
The hegemony of concrete
That it will outlive with the rage
Of flowers overlooked by the wheels of trucks
In the arid desert of cement floors.
The dews of dawn will be enough.
Here is the monkey in front of the deed!
Extending a hand to the indomitable.
To drops of water, to grains of sand!
At the very hour when unfolds
Amongst the tapping of keyboards, the call
From a memory globalized
In terabytes. Champs Elysees
Of the lost chants of Babel.
But man / is not / the universal reference.
Not the sole magician on the way.
Even if the root cannot move.
It can still bear witness. /
When the city understands how to share
The earth and the sky,
It will win./
Light. /
Children’s laughter /
Shards of wind.
Noise of stone /
A show of thin silhouettes
Emerging to full moons.
A ballad of sepia grasses
Dancing feline dances.
Rustling hills
Under the neon lighting up.
A tender offering to the spleen
Of the asphalt ants.
The city needs green space
Space for a deeper world.
Where uniforms come undone
In the flowing seasons.
Directly from this earth
That doesn’t matter just to gardeners,
Nor just to mining giants
Who would own if they could
An entire galaxy.
A piece of fruit has just fallen at my feet.
Plastic floats by with its “Co-op”
Stamp. Behind, on the walls, ivy
Climbs.
We run on the mystery.
Waiting for my daughter under a plum tree.
Coyote in the Suburbs
By Tamar Yoseloff
Once an artist caged himself
with one of their kind;
at first they circled each other,
pressing limbs into corners,
backs into wire, discovering
the shape of confinement:
the coyote was not tamed,
but came to know the artist
as skin and blood, understood
how each movement was a kind
of reckoning – prisoners together.
The artist was making a stand
against a foreign war, a nation
cleaved by boundaries; the coyote
was its own stand, stubborn
wildness, defying what we suppress.
We retreat to aircon rooms
while they advance into yards,
our swing sets and teak chairs
fenced by clipped privet too neat
to hold their jittery bones.
We want to venture to the edge, into
uncharted lands, reach out our hands
as the artist did, touch coarse fur.
Safety in numbers
By Debra Watson
Scientists
turn their compound eyes
Collect, evaluate,
analyse
Report the ways
things might change if
we did more here
took less there
But come the season
we spread our feathers
like restless migratory birds
Hungry and unsettled
to Mallorca and the Azores
Home in on Tasmania and India
or chase the last bits of
exotic snow to glide across
on legs powerful and sure
as eagle’s wings
We will not give up a single pleasure
for the wonders of speed
The effortless lift into
the air confirms
We were here
We were not there
Disasters remote
happen elsewhere
Down the road
In the other village
The other town
The unfortunate part of the city
We eat data
without digesting
the news
as if we could rise above it
Let’s go back to nature
Asibuyele kuyo imvelo
By Sindiswa Zulu
Racism even in environment
War of climate change
Life refusing a cycle
We lose trees
Roots we no longer have
Industries close to people of colour
Poisonous water down our throats
Sickness in our bodies
Production and vehicle smoke
Unclean air through nostrils
Cancer to the lungs
Brain shrinkage(grey matter)
Easy way for depression
We cannot hide ourselves in caves
Vitamins from the sunlight we need
This is a human made problem
It can only be fixed by a human
By returning to the environment
and do better by it!
Nemvelo imbala obandlululweni
Yimpi yokuguquguquka kwesezulu isimo
Indlela yempilo isinqaba indingilizi
Silahlekelwa zihlahla
Umuntu akasenazimpande
Amafemu ezindaweni zabebala
Amanzi anoshevu emphinjeni
Lokho ngukufa emzimbeni
Intuthu yezithuthi nemikhiqizo
Umoya ongalungile emakhaleni
Ungumdlavuza emaphashini
Ufinyeza ubuchopho
Lolo ukhwantalala emqondweni
Singeke sabalekela nasemigedeni
Umsoco welanga siphila ngawo
Le nkanankana inuka iphunga lomuntu
Wuye futhi ongayilungisa
Ngokubuyela kuyo imvelo
Enze kangcono
Di Baladna
By Emtithal Mahmoud
If you are reading this, I forgive you.
You have grown far from the heart of me, my child
have lost the familiar love we held for one another
in your first years of life.
When you were young, you marvelled
at the plants and critters that ran across
my bosom, you worshiped the water,
swam up and down my rivers,
drank from my rain, laughed at each first snow,
begged for sun on the cloudy days.
You didn’t hesitate to sink your fingers
into the mud of me and tickle loose little pebbles,
droplets, seedlings, and worms
how you built a refuge for every wayward wanderer,
lining the kitchen shelves with jars
of lighting bugs and butterflies.
You drank the breeze from my trees,
the honey, sap, gum, with joy and ease
How you came to me
resting your head at my tender hearth
your weary body in my pockets –
you loved me.
You nurtured me before you knew
what it was to nurture,
tended me before you knew
what it was to tend,
tiller, sower, farmer,
green thumbed little one—
you knew me.
Lately, you hurt me,
you break and cut
and tear into me
and I forgive you.
For I am a part of you,
like your brothers and sisters before you
and those who are close to me now, so I forgive you.
I forgive you again for the reaping you do
with no intention to sow
again, for the waste and greed and gluttony.
When you were young
you asked me why they do this,
once brothers and sisters staining the earth
with the blood of your people
shaking apart the branches of your family tree,
you losing ground and hope
all in one fell swoop you turned to me
resting beneath the shade of date-palms and magnolias,
you begged me to make sense of it all.
All I could offer you then was a promise
that wherever you would go you would find me
But now there isn’t much left for me to promise
They’ve dug pits into my sides,
have stolen the rubies, gold, and diamonds
Maya placed in my thighs.
I do all I can to heal but my weary body
can’t clear away the hurt so easily
My waters rush but do not soothe,
the air in my lungs suffocates the little ones.
I cough and spew and gush and bruise,
and it will not heal—
when a child of mine dies by my hands.
Here in the long-forgotten valleys of your youth,
visitors come not of their own accord
but by necessity and I am made whole again
Abdulghani and Izdahara sink their hands into the mud of me,
saplings cling and I am whole again.
Hatem builds monuments to my skies,
captures the sun, channels the lightening,
and I am whole again.
Luka and Layatu fill their homes with fruit born of me,
the children eat and grow and are healthy,
and I am whole again.
Osman protests
It isn’t mine alone to mend he says
I need you
To build and build again to make new
to bring forth life from relentless earth
making an oasis from charred terrain
creating refuge from only scar tissue
and lightning strikes
Let me be more to you than just a final resting place.
Let me do more for you than call you home.
Child of mine if you are reading this,
I need you.
— Your Mother
If this land could speak, would she thank us, praise us,
would she ridicule us, or beg us?
would her voice be weary, gentle, disdainful?
Would it shake with sorrow, with rage?
I used to wonder about these things all the time.
At 11 years old, I watched my neighbour’s house
crumble before my eyes
The flood waters washed away the earth and clay
most people used to build their homes
To see her wade through her home like that,
to watch her try to salvage what little she had left
Our country was already locked in turmoil
and now the earth began to purge us too.
If you could stop the next tornado from hitting your home,
the next hurricane from wiping out your city,
the next drought from starving your people,
the next lightning strike from ending your life
wouldn’t you?
The locusts in the Horn of Africa,
the floods of South Sudan,
the ice in Chicago,
the fires in California, Australia.
The threat of rain that won’t stop
or rest, that won’t come.
We are at the precipice of possible change
A turning point that can and will defines us.
Fire or ice, how will the world end?
I don’t know and I don’t want to find out
not in our generation, and not in the next.
Mycelium Under the Canopy
By Brooke Nind
Under the canopy we planted trees and mushrooms—
the mushrooms sang, nutrients pooling
around them, humus darkening in delight.
Under the canopy the trees and mushrooms worked
in tandem, pushing water through the dirt,
underground transportation.
Under the canopy the mushrooms bore fruit,
bore our burdens, bore everything.
Under the canopy we cut open our houses,
found mushrooms, rolled them in our palms.
Under the canopy we dug a ditch, clawed
into the earth and found mycelium, dipped
our fingers into cleansed water.
Under the canopy we cried over oil spills,
sent mushrooms to the shore to absorb
the chemical pains of the thickened waters.
Under the canopy we dreamed of mushrooms,
grown thick and fluffy like marshmallows – they latched
onto our worries, decomposing them while we slept.
First published on The Poetry Society’s Young Poets Network, as a winner in the Poems to Solve the Climate Crisis challenge with People Need Nature in 2021
65 Cybele
By Sabrina Guo
In the summer
when it pours,
a lake forms
in my backyard,
rivulets soaking
the grass—
a jungle monsoon
thousands
of miles away.
My boots heavy
in the rain,
I share my sorrow
with calming droplets
and hear my truth,
recall that
I was born in Queens,
of which I remember little
except for smoke unfurling
from apartment roofs
before my family moved
to Long Island,
which is hardly an island
at all. It’s not tropical
for one thing, and you don’t need
a boat or a plane to get there. In Oyster Bay,
it snows in the winter,
cold enough for hot
cocoa and heavy coats.
The blades of my skates
cut into the ice
but they don’t break the surface
as the frozen asteroid
65 Cybele did
four point five billion
years ago, breaking off
a chunk of rock
that then became the moon.
In concert with the sun,
that solar nebula
collapsed by gravity
spread its tendrils
over the earth, melted
the ice that remained
into bodies of water.
But where did the asteroid’s ice
come from in the first place?
I can’t help but ask
when I feel the blades
of my skates tracing lines,
knowing full well
all stories must start
somewhere:
water is made of molecules
and molecules
are made of atoms
and atoms are made
of neutrons, electrons,
and protons—
opposite forces,
that need each other
to form life.
Everything a process—
an experience
of coming
into contact
with the other.
First published on The Poetry Society’s Young Poets Network, as a winner in the Poems to Solve the Climate Crisis challenge with People Need Nature in 2021
a united solution
By Renée Orleans-Lindsay
the solution isn’t ‘go green’.
rather, it’s quite a marshy brown;
all the colours on the spectrum thrust together,
pulled into braided harmony.
might the sagging glaciers of the himalayas, dribbling into the yangtze and the indus,
be nourished with kitschy korean neoprene?
those gutsy, ebullient women divers; grasping cold abalone.
the waning coral reefs
crumbling into chroma before your eyes –
your child’s eyes
might they be galvanised by ghanaian manganese,
buzzing phone-chip’s life and breath?
it’s coalition we need; london’s taxis fuelling lima’s arid faucets,
china’s offal coursing through phones rather than waters,
tit-for-tat, recycling, redistribution –
and if everyone made some contribution
today’s teetering future might be solid, stuck
here’s a prayer for humanity and good luck.
First published on The Poetry Society’s Young Poets Network, as a winner in the Poems to Solve the Climate Crisis challenge with People Need Nature in 2021
The Ocean Makes Creatures of Us
By Yvanna Vien Tica
I am watching the ocean drown
us in a fit of love. The sand sticks
to the alcove of my knees. There is a mother
dipping her child into the water, laughing.
The child is slipping in the sand,
webbed toes shimmering on a long
silver fin. The mother is crying
from laughing too hard and looks
at her feet. Then she is crying from watching her child swim
away. I am building a castle in the sand only for the ocean
to wash it away apologetically. There
is a weight stringing across my chest,
and I panic until I realize
it’s just the ocean, rising.
My phone sizzles in my pocket
and I hear a politician crying
out for Noah. But why
would he want animals
like us? No, I am ready
to go. I hold my breath
until my hair winds around my neck
like seaweed. The sun weaves silk
into the water, and the fish nuzzle me
instead of swimming away. I breathe.
When my feet fuse together, I swim
to the mother, laughing. Then we watch
her toes disappear too, replaced
with a long, silver fin. She is crying
from having breathed too much
air. The water embraces us.
I watch the mother swim away with her child.
The ocean kisses me in a fit of love.
First published on The Poetry Society’s Young Poets Network, as a winner in the Poems to Solve the Climate Crisis challenge with People Need Nature in 2021
