Makar Kathleen Jamie is inviting Scots to help create a collaborative nature poem. In her first job since being named Scotland’s new national poet, she’s asking fellow writers and members of the public to submit a single line of nature poetry, either in English, Scots or Scottish Gaelic.
The combined work is pegged to the forthcoming COP26 summit in Glasgow, when she says, “the world’s attention will be on Scotland and the global response to Climate Change”.
Jamie adds: “The collective poem will be composed of single lines submitted by anyone who lives in Scotland and who loves our planet. A collective poem because Climate Change affects all of us, everywhere, all species."
"If the poem is to be ready for November, we will have to work fast. But working fast is a central issue, if we are to avert the worst climate change predictions.
“Poetry has always been at the heart of our thinking about nature and weather, but now the challenges we face are immense. Poetry is a way we can celebrate, mourn, question and create, and work together.
“Sea and rivers. Animals, birds. The seasons and sky. Memory, the future. What do you notice? What do you care about? What is a Scottish Nature Poem in 2021?”
To be published online, the finished piece will also be the subject of a film poem by artist Alistair Cook.
The Makar works with the Scottish Poetry Library (SPL) on Edinburgh’s Royal Mile. SPL director, Asif Khan, said: “Along with the pandemic, the global response to Climate Change is the pressing issue of our time. Poetry is an ideal medium to locate Scotland’s voices for the unified expression of our hopes, fears and vision of better co-existence with the animals and plants with which we share this beautiful planet.
“The stewardship of our environment is a subject that is close to our new Makar’s heart and will feature as a common theme in Kathleen Jamie’s projects and writing in the role over the next three years.”
Contributors are encouraged to start their lines with the words Let’s … or Today … to give the work a coherence. (Gaelic writers will find further guidance on the SPL website.) The Makar is seeking lines from people of all ages living across urban and rural Scotland.
Submissions can be emailed to poem@spl.org.uk by the end of September 2021. For more information visit www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk
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