I hold this fragile sphere of earth and sit up on the long barrow to see myself a minuscule speck on the sphere at the end of the day at the end of the world and tell myself there could be more time and the waters of the Severn promise me they’ve always been […]
First we laughed with prickly legs and stubble beards at police in polished riot vans. Then we laughed shivering like candles at the Prime Minister’s heated swimming pool. We carried our laughter like The Big Issue and hurled it at the Education Minister and his ten-thousand- pound Rolex. When they took our right to […]
It can be hard to keep going when the environmental crisis is ongoing, and worsening as the years go by. It’s easy to turn away. Of course, sometimes we need to watch a funny movie, go for a walk in nature, or have a nice meal. Self-care and resilience are part of the work. […]
Read More… from The Exhilaration of Everything Change Cath Drake
Why not go on a short walk? Only fifteen minutes or so. It could take you anywhere, through a green space, or down city streets. Go on a walk and listen to recordings of poetry melded with sound. These natural sounds were recorded on site at the Ring of Brodgar, Orkney, Scotland. They comprise wind, […]
Read More… from Rewilding: Brodgar Poetry/Sound WalkStephanie Green and Sonja Heyer
WALRUS It began in Scarborough, on New Year’s Eve, beside the sea The discarded boot perhaps, of some vagrant giant Washed up on smaller shores; Prised us open with ivory prongs Finding things we carried with us from afar Quite unaware. The wonderfully-worn-loved leather jacket I lost in Manchester in 1992 When I […]
Brandon Ra Pestano is a 26 year old poet of mixed Guyanese and English heritage from Brighton, England. He has represented the South of England in spoken word at the National Portrait Gallery, as well as performing his poetry at Greenwich West Gallery and having a short poetry film exhibited at the Institute […]
The moose haunts my dreams, his palmate rack begging me for alms, or succour, or release. Now he stands at the end of my bed in the dark, chewing cud. I must scare him to save him as the men here kill rogue moose, their rifles cocked, their wool caps low on their heads. […]
only that it’s becoming unmanageable; that much, only, do I know. And more than knowing – I feel it, in the corals bleaching and leaching of colour, in the thud of trunks as they hit the floor of ancient forests, in the vapour trails that crisscross the skies like angry scars, in the face […]
There are new dandelions on the Common. The spindly stalks of these coin-sized supernova can barely lift their heads from the ground, today being November and the season for dandelions long being over. One weekend, three years back, the boy and I questioned how the solar rays of dandelion petals switched modes to become […]
We were privileged to welcome Lic Torc, climate change poet and performer, to compere THE ANTIDOTE: our beautiful, creative and furious battle cry against climate inertia, staged by Writers Rebel at the Tate Modern on April 15. Here she explains how the climate emergency puts fire in her belly and how she’s working with […]
Read More… from “We are Climate Canaries” – Liv Torc at THE ANTIDOTE
Listen to acclaimed novelist and lifelong activist Sarah Winman speak passionately about our obligation to act on the climate emergency in this short but punchy interview, recorded following her performance of US inauguaral poet Amanda Gorman’s poem Earth Rise. Watch Sarah’s compelling performance here. Or click here to see the entire festival – with […]
Read More… from “There is no rehearsal, the time is now” – Sarah Winman at THE ANTIDOTE
Today’s interview is with Nikita Gill, who mesmerised our ANTIDOTE crowd with three poems that find extraordinary in the everyday. She read out her Reasons to Live Through the Apocalypse. What are yours? Watch Nikita’s full performance here. Or click here to see the entire festival – with contributions from eminent writers, poets and […]
Read More… from “Hope is a group project” – Nikita Gill at The Antidote
7.9 inches of rain fell in Central Park last night dead cicadas on the crosswalk their bodies bunched in brittle knots sticky candy sky bright with grief branches submerged by the weight of our silence a letter unread a door closed firmly & […]
Read More… from The Month of Emergencies – poemRebecca Faulkner
Whether you can get there from here or wherever depends on whether you are there already, on whether you will find that you are already standing amidst the outspread hands of its stones, and their misty grey dawns, on whether indeed the arcs and folds of that sky really can make all location moot […]
The Great Barrier Reef diver/cameraman ‘cried in my mask’, to see the bleaching. Mankind is beginning to take creaky baby steps towards being able to live forever. Just when there’s no more forever to live in. There is a shock that sidles from the phrase ‘humans were rare,’ as applied to time in […]
Sakura Not Yoshino in April when blossom-fringed branches bow towards the ground in prayer beneath an early moon illuminating the frailty of white clouds where friends gather to sip sake and petals flutter to the ground pale as moths but deep January in Islington’s Highbury Fields where these tender buds this early […]
Tell us a bit about your current work on environmental issues and the pandemic, and your book about personal and social anxiety. My collection of poems Reckless Paper Birds contains a large number of poems that inhabit my experiences of severe anxiety and vulnerability. Since it came out, I’ve written a number of poems […]
Read More… from Read: Q&A with John McCullough, Hawthornden Prize 2020 winnerJohn McCullough
Animal Eden It was the year of the viral video, nature coming out of hiding. We were supposed to believe that within weeks, animal life had overwritten us with their joy and reckless abandon, as if instincts told them like radio waves signalling through the ether that humans are under quarantine and no […]
XRWRITERSREBEL · Twenty Four Splashes Of Denial by Ruth Padel Ruth Padel is a poet, novelist and non-fiction author, Professor of Poetry at King’s College London, Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and Zoological Society of London. She has published a novel focusing on wildlife in India, and a range of non-fiction […]
Read More… from Listen: Twenty Four Splashes of DenialRuth Padel