In this blog post we'd like to share Amy Louise Wardle's poem 'Relic' written at the last meeting of Sheffield Climate Writers. The writing exercise imagined a future civilisation looking back on our everyday objects, having discovered them centuries later. To find out what Amy chose to write about, you'll have to read the poem!
relic
big light off ey, pass me a brew Time Team at tea time on planet Gaia (mark II) i've been ill today. ancestor of a bug from another world sucked down hairless ape's sink plug. last millenia's leaders were good at making holes and covering them up with a bit of filler - oh look, a scrap thing. rusted. handled. with teeth. it's made from steel of field and sheaf - they've pulled the relic out of a memory of a river. limestone and moss - wow. the experts enthuse, they illustrate how a lightning bolted, cutting through afternoon,
to divide before and after
6 July 2045: the people saw a cry trace
like spilled white ink in the sky waterdrops transmute into surge, each tear a solemn pilgrim in a blue funeral dirge. vast. allotment (had) meant a lot apparently until all the Kings and Edwards floated away in the sea and those dumpties couldn't put owt together no more: no soil, no plants; no ground, no floor - oh if only they had done something. saved their skins; listened to a child or a healer - "this instrument was a humble vegetable peeler"