Workshop 2: Polly Atkin (online)

Friday 6 May, 12.00-14.00

Online workshop via Zoom

£15

To speak the impossible hope of the firefly: trying to notice joy in a time of ecological crisis

How can we write through, about and against ecological crisis without being eaten by despair? In this workshop we will look at poems that address climate emergency, apocalyptic vision, extinction and catastrophe, and yet find love and joy in their worlds, enough to continue fighting for continuance. Using these poems as touchstones, we will explore how a poem can balance the call to lament and the call to praise, and how a poem may act as a kind of seed bank, an insurance against loss. From these examples, including poems by Camille T. Dungy, Dante Di Stefano and Craig Santos Perez, we will develop our own poems of love in a time of climate change, for the world around us, and/or each other.