Our Climate Conversation

What Kind of Mover are You?

I wrote this poem for our new young MP two weeks after our face-to-face meeting where I was asking him to support the Climate and Nature Bill. I suspect that he does not receive many poems in this way, so perhaps it will have an emotional impact and he may just turn up to the second reading on January 24 2025. An alternative title could be Wonder and Awe because that phrase turns up three times - once in each verse.

What are we doing about it?

On our recent Twinning trip to Normandy I turned our Choir song into a poem. It's not exactly the same of course, and the reference to a Tempest is there because they experienced it and it left a big impression - devastating woodland, ripping off shutters, bringing down power and telephone lines.

A Poem for Today

I wrote this poem towards the end of 2022. It was a difficult time personally after the loss of two close friends and I think you can hear that in the words.

Time Plays Tricks

The subject matter of this poem are the brief sharp memories from corners of childhood and a reflection on the uncertainty of future, that it cannot be a smoothe extension of the past. The poem argues for a different relationship with time to connect with each other and the natural world that we are a part of.

A Vision of the Future

To keep mentally positive, I find I need to imagine a place a few years into the future where we have already made some of the transitions we need to do to survive.  My starting point was just that idea from the Transition Town movement: 'I ask people to close their eyes and to take a walk around in that world, in that 2030, using all of their senses. What does it smell like? What does it taste like, sound like, feel like?'  My finishing point, the title of this poem, is actually quoted from a speech by the then Housing Minister, Harold Macmillan, in 1951 about the Public Housing policy consensus at that time.

Poem for Italy's river: Father Po

The river Po rises in the Italian Alps and flows 400 miles eastwards through Turin, Cremona, Ferrara, and out into the Adriatic via its delta just south of Venice. Usually it creates a wide fertile flood plain, the source of Italy’s famed Risotto rice and many other crops. But this year (2022) with the worst drought for 70 years, extreme heat and hardly any snow cover in the Alps, all attributed to Climate Change, it has nearly disappeared. The whole region has declared a state of emergency.