For what? For whom?

Yesterday, I got my new chapbook, A is for Anthropocene: A climate dictionary for our times, printed.

One copy, just for myself, just to see what it would look like in its ultimate form. It is a violation though, for a collection of poems on the climate crisis. It should exist only in its digital avatar, actually there should be no climate crisis and it shouldn’t exist at all.

That said, there is great power in holding a book in your hands, the real book, your book, smelling of paper and ink and sweat and blood, pushing bookmarks through the pages, imagining yellow highlights and annotations and book shelves and dogears. Oh yes! While my fellow-poets in this collection live in different countries, and that meant so much as we pulled together our global perspectives, I wished for a moment that they all lived here, in my town, so I could ring their doorbells and hand them each a copy (yes, I shouldn’t print one, leave alone five, I know).

But all that apart, I write this today to celebrate digital chapbooks and little self-published collections. Stuff that doesn’t make it to Amazon or the corner bookstore. Stuff that has no Goodreads review or ISBN number. May they all reach many, many hands. May they all be passed from reader to reader. May they all rest, worn and creased and loved, along with precious others. May they be read. A little.

I have five collections that I never took to a mainstream publisher. Big ones, little ones, somewhat-in-the-middle ones. It was enough to just gather the poems, name the chapbooks and tell a few other poets, some of whom might have even read them. It didn’t matter. Not then. Perhaps, not even now. I have no idea why I do this, though I am quite sure I will do one more, maybe a few more. Why? For what? For whom? (P.S. for poetry or for the poet are not quite the right answers)

So, should they exist? Should there be a library of lost chapbooks? Should anyone care? Should they die like they were born, quietly, wearing their Adobe best, in the archive of a blog or a social media post? Or recycled for the planet’s sake? (There is a climate crisis, isn’t there?) Or should they be read in libraries and book stores, in schools and holiday gatherings, in book clubs and bars, gifted for Diwali or New Year? To whom? By whom?

It doesn’t matter, dear poet, dear reader, or does it?

Thirteen ways of looking at climate change

1.

the climate is changing —
but only because
we refuse to.

2.

There was that one flood.
This is the — ARK.
THIS — is the ark.
This is — THE — ark.

3.

Temperatures rise skyward:
Icarus’ wings
melt where he stands.

Art: Bing AI Image Creator

4.

In the desolation
the wind tells stories:
“Once upon a time.”

5.

Racing to dystopia:
on a hundred million barrels
of crude per day.

6.

Extreme weather:
where the scarecrow stood,
a pot with no eyes

7.

Somewhere a war
somewhere a private jet
somewhere a forest burns…somewhere a forest burns…

8.

What can I do? – you ask.
What can anyone do? – you cry.
One pumpjack nods. A thousand more agree.

9.

dead walruses, lost glaciers,
zombie viruses, floods and cows —
connect the dots, now connect the spaces.

10.

Bleached coral:
even a polyp
has rights

11.

That Category 6 hurricane will not check
if the towns in its path
are Net Zero.

12.

At your own risk:
Beyond 1.5C, the Anthropocene
has no guard rails

13.

just because
you don’t see it through your window
doesn’t mean it’s not there

***

You can find more on all these aspects of Climate Change in my new chapbook ‘A is for Anthropocene – a climate dictionary for our times‘. Ask for your free PDF copy.

But more about the art. For micropoem #3, I used Bing’s image creator to generate the image. If any of these micropoems inspire you to draw/ paint/generate an image, do share it or send it to me. I will add the images to the post here with due credit.

(And as always, thank you Wallace Stevens, for a form that works in every situation)

The Climate Poems: A is for Anthropocene

At a public event recently, a group handed out cards with questions about climate change. There were questions about rising temperatures, glaciers, sea-level and methane – conversations that are urgent, important and need to happen, constantly. Check out the questions, see how many you can answer.

In my new chapbook, A is for Anthropocene – a climate dictionary for our times, we’ve touched upon all of those topics and more. How do we bring attention and awareness to the biggest existential problem we face, how do we start dialogue on climate, how do we navigate the Anthropocene…

Write to me or drop your email here to get a free PDF copy of the chapbook. It also includes work by Brendan Macodrum, Nina Nazir, Sherry Marr and Suzanne Miller.

I am sharing here a poem from the collection – that ties in to the first question on the card.

Methane

Methane emissions are still far too high, especially as methane cuts are among the cheapest options to limit near-term global warming…There is just no excuse. – Fatih Birol, head, International Energy Agency.

Mix stories. Add ice. And enough
heat to melt it all. Take a goldilocks
planet, just right for every little bear.
And a little prince or two (or 8 billion)
who forget to pull up the baobabs
while they tend to the rose. The
grandmother grows teeth inside her
benign disguise and the little boy calls
wolf but it is only the pencilled sheep
that eats up the rose that makes the
little girl cry because the baobabs are
splitting the planet and meanwhile the
ice (remember?) melts and the sea levels
rise and the bears are dead and so is the
grandmother but once upon a time
there wasn’t as much methane in the
atmosphere. Eighty times more potent
than CO2, it causes a quarter of all the
warming, but you know the rest of this
story. Forty-four sunsets and three bowls
of porridge, a big, bad wolf and not one
happily-ever-after. “There is just no excuse.”

***

Let’s keep talking/ writing/reading about climate change. Read more about the chapbook here.