Climate change poetry collection inspires environmental action
A new collection of poetry dedicated to raising awareness of climate change is available to purchase in time for Christmas, with all proceeds going to EJF.
A new collection of thought-provoking poetry explores different approaches to understanding and tackling climate change.
The collection, called A Change of Climate, was compiled from entries submitted to a global poetry competition run by Manchester Metropolitan University and the University of Edinburgh. All proceeds from the collection will be going to the Environmental Justice Foundation's climate campaign.
In a global competition, people were asked to submit poems of 40 lines or less about climate change and were purposely left to interpret this topic for themselves. The poetry contest was held this summer and attracted 174 entries from 23 countries in five different languages.
The result is a range of sad, angry and even comedic poems, the best of which made it into the compendium which is available to purchase for Kindle now.
Steve Trent, Executive Director of EJF, said: "Across the world millions of people are being forced from their homes, driven out by increasingly frequent and severe extreme weather events, from floods to fires, they are today's climate refugees.
“We need to communicate these threats and challenges, along with the solutions to them, solutions that are within our grasp if we act now.
“This superb collection of poems will help to engage, explain and inspire people to act on climate change, both for our own wellbeing, but also for those who are suffering the effects of climate change, but often struggle to be heard.”
This competition was run by Dr Sam Illingworth and Dan SImpson at Manchester Metropolitan University.
When asked why he decided to run this competition, Dr Illingworth said:
“Climate change is real. It is happening now. It affects all of us. And the only way that we can mitigate its effects in a meaningful fashion is to take collective action.
What was needed is something that can transcend cultural barriers, and which can contextualise and localise a global problem. What was needed was poetry.”
