Last week my new post as Climate Writer with New Writing North and Newcastle University was officially announced and I have been very touched by all the warm messages and gestures of encouragement and support I’ve received. I am often taken by surprise to be reminded of the invisible strands of connection between us when it looks like nothing is happening. Living in a culture of appearances casts mists over all our eyes.
It seems to me one of the difficulties of tackling Climate Change (both in the world and on the page) arises because here in the UK we can’t properly see it. Those people badly affected by the floods of recent years have had to shift into survival mode, without the luxury of any distance to consider the influence and implications of Climate Change on their wrecked homes and lost and ruined possessions. [Clare Shaw’s Flood (Bloodaxe 2018) is a powerful book of poems on the subject of floods in the world and floods in the psyche. See also Brian and Mary Talbot’s fascinating graphic novel Rain (Cape 2019).] If we can’t see a thing (or hear, touch, smell or taste it), it’s hard to know what we’re faced with and how to respond. Because we can’t quite pin it down, the words for it elude us and because the words elude us, we can’t quite pin it down. A vicious circle.
The fact that Climate Change is being ignored by governments capable of introducing new initiatives and renewable systems, that already exist, in order to address our runaway carbon emissions adds to the sense of unreality. Climate Change can feel like a collective dream, the way Cocteau thought of cinema. Like a dream, the meaning is hard to interpret – things aren’t what they seem, there are many layers, characters and objects often symbolic rather than actual. There are those who say that everyone in a dream is some aspect of ourselves. And so it is with Climate Change – we are each (and together) the protagonist of this story, and we are also the antagonist, our own worst enemy. It’s no good waiting to be rescued for we are our own saviours too. This hall of mirrors makes the subject even more tricky to write about. The language itself is not designed to cross the subject-object divide, let alone accommodate the disruption of verb tense to triangulate time and allow past, present and future to co-exist.
These are some of the first principles – the origin myth of Climate Change, if you like – I’ve been trying to get back to in these initial weeks of acclimatisation. My head a little dizzy with all the reading and thinking and puzzling, I’ve felt a bit like Sisyphus doomed to keep rolling an enormous rock up a hill over and over again when it’s always tumbling back down. In an effort to create some physical boundaries and foundations for my work, and a sense of progress, I’ve created a dedicated space in my little hut some friends kindly passed on to me a few years ago. Always declared an academia-free zone and my very own medicine hut, I used it to regather and recharge while I was working on my PhD. Now it can come into its own to accommodate (literally) my musings on the elusive, unwieldly subject of Climate Change. As if it always knew this was going to be its purpose in life, its manufacturer’s mark has gained new significance. I’m hoping my hut will carry the weight of this work so I don’t need to. Better Atlas than Sisyphus.
Apart from establishing a conducive physical space, I’ve also been experimenting with a virtual container for my process. Like most people, I have a love-hate relationship with digital platforms and the only social media space I feel remotely comfortable in is Instagram. I appreciate the focus on visual images and lack of clutter, its capacity to connect and inform. Since the beginning of the year I have been posting daily images and short texts arising from an awareness of the natural world and climate issues. The form I am following is an adaptation of the ‘year renga’ I used (in a notebook, privately, never intended for publication) that ended up becoming book of days (Smokestack 2009). Renga is an old Japanese collaborative form I’ve been working with for the past two decades, alongside others and alone. I’m not entirely sure where I’m going with this but as a daily practice it keeps the subject at the front of my mind and every day is another door, a chance to refocus and begin again. Which is perhaps another first principle for tackling Climate Change, living with it and writing about it.
Here are my renga verses for January. You can see the images on IG @lindafrancebooksandplants (also via my website). You can also read more about my post on the New Writing North website.
January
Weather forecast –
new * things *
under * the * sun
black coal and butterfly wings
both out of their element
bearded lichen
knows where time lives
and grows there
less knowledge
more attention
using my car
as a salt lick, the sheep
make a monograph
high water
Leith
raindrops on the windowpane –
the lamp stays lit
all day
January’s muses
Beauty, Prudence and Folly
five hundred years old
the Spanish chestnut tree
still bearing fruit
of earthly joy
thou art my choice
keepsake –
something hidden
inside something else
clouds and crocodiles
a three-umbrella day
before we leave:
peace
to this place
crossing the border
windmills! windmills! windmills!
white pencil points
of snowdrops
about to write their name
the room is full
of all the lost creatures
on the windowsill
a bowl
of borrowed time
I resort to poetry
like I resort to tears
four of us
not quite on top of the world
but nearly
walking into
the wind’s sighs
the unknown becomes known
the outcasts come inside
the strange becomes ordinary
our molehills
are mountains
we need new words
for what we don’t know
honest and kind
invisible birds singing
dusksongs in the birches
year of the rat
new moon – second chance
at starting over
Sunday morning
a tangle of light and dark
in the corner of the room
a shopping trolley
a very British rebellion
her black cat called Maya
watches my every move
a head-scratching sort of day –
out among other people’s voices
to hear my own better
my car still proud
to be European
one day gone missing –
next month
come find me
One of the things I want to do with this work is to connect with others and find ways for writers to come together and discover what they might be able to do to help find the words we need to see our way into what this time is asking of us. So please do chip in here with comments, suggestions and anything at all you think I should be looking at. The post is only part-time but I’m keen to cover as much ground as possible over the year.
Many thanks.
Botanical 