Climate Change Poetry
Communicating climate change effectively, whether through hard science or political debate, often requires trusted sources. But the language used by scientists and politicians is not always suited to overcoming the enormous psychological distance of climate change. The special ability of poetry to communicate compassion, vulnerability, utopia and dystopia can offer texts which engage audiences in ways not possible with mass media. With this project, we have commissioned the work of Amanda Anastasi for a range of poetry that captures the science, politics, impacts and ways of imagining climate change futures. The poems here include one line poems that anticipate a world changed by climate, as well as longer poems in which climate is infused with everyday life in confronting ways.
One line poems View
Ash
Bats
Quiet Wetland
Recovery
Beekeeper
Cars
Child
Cooling
Documents
Flood
Flower
Grass
Kangaroo Island
Koala
Mallacoota, VIC
Newcastle, NSW
North Pole
Possums
Protestors
Roads
Whales
The Fence Sitter
The Lounge Room
Tide
Bath
Wild flower
Antarctica
Mask
Swift Parrot
Solomon Islands I
Solomon Islands II
Solomon Islands III
A choice
Disconnect
Butterfly Fish
Wane i asi
Lessons
Post-Bushfire
Change
Children’s March
Corroboree Frog
The Ocean
Changed Mind
The Future
Instead
Climate Action
The Things We Did Next
In July 2020, Amanda Anastasi was the Artist in Residence with Assembly for the Future #1, one of a series of participatory digital gatherings in which artists and the public created new visions for the future that considered possible political, environmental and social future scenarios. These monostich poems, set in the year 2029, were written in response to a provocation by author and Noongar woman Claire G Coleman and commissioned by The Things We Did Next.
Birdwatcher
Early Alert
Late Autumn
Lorikeets
Major Mitchell Cockatoos
Nest Boxes
Roof Farms
Security Guards
Wind Turbine
2022 floods
Poet Amanda Amanda Anastasi responded to the 2022 floods exploring the impacts of flooding across Australia with this series of one line poems.
Gympie Bridge
Sunshine Coast
Lismore
North Coast
Brisbane River
Bat Piles View
AMANDA ANASTASI
Bat Piles
South East Queensland, 2014
The wildlife officer moves into the woodland,
steps between the crooked carpet of winged
limbs; the stiff cloaks swathing brown bodies.
He looks out at the row upon row of flying
foxes, lifeless or starved to motionlessness;
each reduced to lay at the level of a human heel.
He silently considers the furnaces of the trees,
to have seared the creatures from their perches
and demoted them to a crunch and unevenness
underfoot. He considers the one mammal capable
of flying and its label as pest and rodent; the raising
of it to gothic emblem and the muse of superheroes;
its replication in plastic for children’s showbags and arcade
knick-knacks. In Boonah, Palmwoods, Laidley and Gatton –
here too, they are inanimate. Their slitted eyes are sealed,
their light bodies swiftly dropped in council rubbish bags,
in response to complaints of the stench of carcasses
and the fingers and ankles bitten by frantic teeth.
© Amanda Anastasi, 2019
Into the Heat View
AMANDA ANASTASI
Into the Heat
On the opposite side of nose-smudged windows,
I recall a caught inhale, an agitation, the claustrophobia
of the street. A young couple attempts to stroll on the footpath,
then return indoors before the brush of hands and exchange
of words. A single dishevelled cat, its jaw a fallen lever, pads in soft
zigzags on the empty path to a bass line of air-con units.
The local children, grudgingly prolonging their games,
twitch like caged canaries in their locked rooms. The many tales
they have heard will soon compel them to risk the sun’s sear
for a mere inhale of yellowed grass, a glimpse of a seabird
scrapping for a morsel, the feel of bark, the sting of mozzie
bite and thistle weed, the clarity of near birdsong; to let dirt
house beneath the fingernails. From the unshaded, quiet side
of the building, an elderly couple unhurriedly descend the steps
of their apartment to settle atop a kerbside bench, deliberate
and ready. Their eyelids and joined hands soon fall, their heads bow
and lower softly. Their stomachs compress like accordions.
They do not react to the approaching siren’s crescendo.
© Amanda Anastasi, 2019
The Invasion View
AMANDA ANASTASI
The Invasion
Belushya Guba on Novaya Zemlya, Russia, 2019
As though the kerb were the edge of sea ice,
it lifts one heavy, reluctant foot to the asphalt,
lumbers across the road with the combined grit
and desolation of a depleted predator, as cars swerve
and circle around it. Later in the afternoon, another is seen
lurking behind a block of flats. It peers into a window, fixated
on a woman cleaning fish. She slams the blind shut,
though the shadow of the animal's jowl and saucepan-sized
paw is still visible. Another staggers over the mountain
of discarded bottles and cartridges at the local tip. It sniffs a car battery
and sinks its teeth into a chunk of Styrofoam. The next day, children are marked
late or absent from school and all who leave their homes move to and from
their vehicles with a ready vigilance. The stories are spreading of a bear wandering
into a doctor’s reception and the council hallway, undeterred by signals, dogs, patrol
cars or electric fences. Later, the townspeople make a circle around a third polar bear lying
on the pavement with a tranquiliser in its side. Arrangements are being made to airlift it back
to the Arctic where, again, it will not be able to stand at the edge of sea ice; will not catch a seal
for nourishment. It will stumble and wearily drag itself, then turn and head back to the village.
© Amanda Anastasi, 2019
Charlotte in Her Natural Habitat View
AMANDA ANASTASI
Charlotte in Her Natural Habitat
After a hot morning unexpectedly clarified with rain
and once dew had settled on the lightly shook leaves,
she was led out by hand to a wall-less space; unhurried
yet purposeful, her headset, shoes and mask removed.
Suddenly alert, her eyes darted to the soft sky as though
she were entering a new yet familiar portal. Her feet met
a padded ground less tightly woven than carpet and firmer
than a mat and, without pause, threw herself into the green.
Each blade, when taken between the fingers, seemed a cross
between cotton and the porous skin of a cheek. The air
itself was open, punctuated by both distant and near snippets
of birdsong, though mum could not say what kind of bird it was
that repeated that upward, mischievous invitation and seemed
to betray a knowledge that all was possible and laughably easy.
As the heat began its return, she asked when she’d be taken
again to The Secret Garden and the magical setting of her many
storybooks and films. Mum said Yes, again – of course
with eyes averted and dimmed, as she could not say when.
© Amanda Anastasi, 2020.
Koala Holds Up Traffic View
AMANDA ANASTASI
Koala Holds Up Traffic
Ineptly, he moves to the middle road line
with the tap of claws not made for unyielding
road. He stops and stares at the benign queue
of delayed four-wheel drives and the drum
of doors as families emerge from growling engines
to point, coo and exclaim like elated circus punters.
A policeman and ranger carefully angle and steer
him from the highway and the sounds of photo snaps
and Facebook Live narrations. Step by languid step,
he is positioned beyond the fog of tar and concrete
for his return to the retreating forest. The people
re-enter their cars, turn on playlists and continue.
© Amanda Anastasi, 2020.
Loggers, Post Fire View
AMANDA ANASTASI
Loggers, Post Fire
Before renewal can begin its certain
work in the tree heads; before new
green can sprout or flourish, again
they enter. From a dark tree hollow,
a glider peers out to a place where
destruction had swept the trees
and marsupials bolted to the hills,
their limbs burning. The machines
now border the remaining tree ferns,
making flat newly germinating plants.
They begin their task of removing
rotting timber: the food for insects,
the shelter for plants and funghi,
currently nourishing bandicoots.
They make their dent into the way of things,
disrupting soil that will bring the next yield;
the next birth from black. After the shouts
in Fluoro and vehicles have retreated,
the quietude and inevitable stirrings
return to the double-disturbed land.
© Amanda Anastasi, 2020.
Four Seasons
These poems, spanning the four seasons across various locations, document the future impacts to flora, fauna and human seasonal activity due to the late arrival of seasons because of climate change. These poems touch on how various species' responsiveness to seasonal cues differ and therefore change the usual ways some elements of the ecosystem interact with each other.
Summer View
Melbourne, Australia
Autumn View
Vermont, New England, US
Winter View
Perisher Ski Resort, Australian Snowy Mountains
Spring View
West Coast, Greenland
Critically Endangered
Written by Amanda Anastasi in 2022 these poems tell the stories of Australia's endangered species.
The Possum by the Skiers View
Mountain Pigmy Possum (Burramys parvus) – Critically Endangered
Southern Victoria, Australia
Now, to find a warm heath
tucked deep beneath
a playground of seemingly
vanishing boulders,
transforming rock screes
and foliage where moth, seed
and plum-pine
are trickier to discover;
where hibernation is disrupted
by snow making machines.
To the screech and rumble
of road building;
to the call, scream and giggle
of humans down mountain,
the seeking of refuge begins.
The snowlike continues its retreat
and the foxes have come out to play.
Photo source: Museums Victoria
The Bird's Forgotten Song View
Regent Honeyeater (Anthochaera Phrygia) – Critically Endangered
Suburban Melbourne and Sydney
From the mouth of a Regent Honeyeater
comes the song of a friarbird and often
the tune of a black-faced cuckooshrike.
The female of the species moves on,
unresponsive to this oddity.
She finds the repertoire uninspired,
the vocal range and stamina brief.
Soon she hears the call she has been
waiting for: bill-clicking, resonant, true.
Hastening to the source of this beauty -
twitching, expectant - she does not find
the black and lemon bird, tail edged
in yellow. The melody is sounding
from a machine tied to a tree,
Photo source: Birdlife Australia
The Swift Parrot's Inspection View
Swift Parrot (Lathamus discolor) – Critically Endangered
Southeastern Australia
She is aware of the precarity
of every moment spent on the move.
The quest continues for a suitable
tree: one with an unassuming
entrance, preferably leading
to a deep space and wide floor;
a harbour for two or three eggs
and the fledglings to come.
Nectar is abundant but a fitting
shelter less so. On this inspection,
she is greeted with vacant ground,
felled trunks, a tree with a cavity
too visible to sugar gliders
and others coming for her.
Feeling the young inside her,
the search continues.