The last IWC Climate Writing Session hosted by Alice Kinsella at the end of November turned out to be a cracker.
The first guest was Catherine Cleary, a former journalist who now runs Pocket Forests Ireland. They help people develop forests on tiny pieces of land, in company gardens and communal green spaces. Their work is based on the Miyawaki method, which aims to allow plants to repopulate areas as if humans did not interfere. The ensures areas with high diversity can develop in the smallest of spaces.
When covering food as a journalist, Cleary began to come into contact with farmers and realised that working with nature ensured a reciprocal relationship. Animals can be left outside for longer if there are trees on the land with them. During COVID, she began the Pocket Forest project and to date has planted 10,000 trees while also planting 24,000 trees on marginal land in Roscommon.
She also worked on The Hare’s Corner: Making Space for Nature, with poems by Jane Clarke and illustrations by Jane Carkill. The hare’s corner is the corner of a field traditionally left for wildlife and the book includes stories of restoring habitats and reconnecting with nature from people around Ireland.
The second guest was Salena Godden, an English poet and author of Jamaican-Irish descent. She has an incredible gift for titles with a novel called “Mrs Death Misses Death” and a poetry book called “Pessimism is for Lightweights” among others.
She has been an activist for many years, beginning with her schooldays. She began performing her work initially at rallies and her work has a punchy rhythm due to being shouted.
She talked about the role of the arts in climate justice and the importance of visualization in bridging the gap between imagination and action. It’s easy for us to visualize the worst case scenarios but that is not good, not edifying, she said. Instead we should visualize fish in clean oceans and then use our imaginations to figure out how to get ourselves to that point. That will give us room and space to breathe and to dream and to love the world. She mentioned Hot Poets, a group of poets led by Michael Rosen who use poetry and science together to try and imagine a better possible future.
When asked about books that help us to visualize better scenarios, Catherine Cleary mentioned The Overstory by Richard Powers, while Salena Godden plugged her own books! Her latest is called “With Love, Grief and Fury.”
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