Our next climate writer is Sheffield poet Jill Angood, who says:
I am active in as many ways as I can be in preserving and celebrating the world of life that is around us and that we are part of. I love to write and share poetry and am often to be found singing my heart out in various choirs. I often write about landscape and its effect on those who live in it, and am particularly interested in celebrating the nature that cannot be repressed in our sterile city environments.
I am keen to be involved in the Climate Writing Group as it is my experience that if we incorporate creativity of any kind, whether it be with words or music or craft or art, our capabilities to keep on going in the face of catastrophic changes to our global ecosystems will be sustained more effectively than any other way. I need to write out my despair and grief about what is happening to us and our precious planet, and write in the hope that comes from connecting with others, hearing what they have to say, and acting out of belief that we can change things for the better.
At the first climate writers launch event one of the writing prompts was to write a letter, maybe to the earth, maybe to a person, maybe to an inanimate object; we had previously been considering what could give us hope in the despair we can feel in the current political environment; the letter below is my largely unedited response to that prompt.
Dear Dad
Much of what you taught me about growing things is becoming redundant: St Patrick’s Day is no longer the best date to plant potatoes, February is not necessarily February Fill-Dyke, and the bees can’t find enough to eat in the too early too bright sunshine. Even close attention to the waxing and waning of the moon doesn’t seem to help the peas. And now we grow courgettes not marrows and have more success with French beans than our old friends the Runners. There’s even an olive tree growing in our neighbour’s yard.
But much of what you taught me will stand me in good stead. I can hear your voice in my ear: eat as much of what you grow and what grows locally as you can, even when you get really fed up with sprouting broccoli in the Hungry Gap; keep your compost heap hot and tidy and fill the soil with good things, grow enough to share with slugs and hedgehogs, collect water in whatever container you can, talk to your plants, feed them tenderly, love the feel of earth at your fingertips. Most importantly give away as much of what you grow as you can, bunches of sweet peas, baskets of soft fruit, enough lettuces to stock a market stall.
And I wish you could have known that you have given me the understanding that no one gardens without hope, the hope that our seedlings will survive and flourish. And all of us who love growing have boundless interest in the ways we can to continue to grow the vegetables and flowers and trees that we need and love .
In this way, I am part of the green chain that links us together and to the earth.
With so much love and plenty of dirt in my fingernails
Jill