Blogs, newspapers (on- and off-line), books, magazine and journal articles - column-inches proliferate, but words can get lost, and it's hard to choose the right ones. So, it's great to meet someone who knows how to achieve this tricky feat - getting across the hardest of concepts simply and briefly, in verse. One such person, poet Susan Richardson did just this recently when she performed her Arctic-inspired pieces at the latest Artful Scribe/Archimedes Screw poetry showcase in the Art House. It happened to take place the day after the now-famous Shard climb, which made poems like Thought for the Day and Defrosting feel all the more relevant (they are in this collection). Susan has a genuine feel for the environments, peoples and myths of northern latitudes and this came across in her performance - you could feel the drip, drip, drip of melting ice...
Of course I'm not suggesting poetry will save the world, but might it #savethearctic? Well, it can certainly help by publicising the campaign to new audiences, by expressing the issues in new ways, and by putting out there emotions that may sometimes be missing from news pieces and the like - the poignancy of the Arctic's plight in the face of greedy companies like Shell. In any case, our local spoken word crowd are working hard - Jenn Hart's new piece I Am Ancient is on Youtube as you can see here, and I even felt inspired to write an #iceclimb verse myself. Words - they can do a lot if chosen well...
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