An important missive Jane
The environment should be the big issue for us all - from recycling to
ending all war.
Best of environmentalists writing in the mainstream (Guardian) in the UK is
George Monbiot - for he opens up debates both within mainstream politics and
in the Green movement.
I don't always agree with Monbiot but on one dilemma I do. Bio-diesel to
soft greens is the way forward. For them, it means mixing spent vegetable
oil with diesel, recycling and cutting down on carbon emissions. Fine.
However, in Indonesia they're literally burning down forests to plant scrub
palm trees from which bio-diesel, as opposed to petroleum, will be created.
Monbiot looked at the figures and this allegedly Green step forward takes us
to the very precipice of global warming. These contradictions abound but we
must not be scared of them in being true to writing.
I think that you're entirely right that we need to keep writing about our
environment - from individual to global encounters. For me there is a tower
over all: money. Today, some guy in the Japanese stock exchange pressed the
wrong button and over a billion pounds was literally wiped out by this
gambling.
And who made all these billions floating in the markets globally? Us - the
ordinary people. When bombs rage and people are torn apart it is our money
doing it - literally. We'd like to think that our direct and indirect taxes
are for society but so much is used to build up the military and profit big
business that we're all left scraping our pockets for the homeless and
poor...
What hurts me is that the mainstream Media is increasingly its own audience.
The gaps in our society are closing.
Thereby, whether writing personal, writing small, writing big or whatever,
poetry is ever more important in sharing the spirit of all humanity.
All best, Rupert
> More and more poets, in my opinion, ought to be looking at green issues in
> their work, just as we
> should all be recycling and using less energy - or alternative energies -
> where possible. It must
> be, par excellence, the issue of our time. Yet there's a current vogue for
> self-absorption in poetry
> which is unlikely to recommend itself to future generations as memorable.
>
> I suppose I'm moving towards 'greenness' myself, having always been a
> rural rather than an urban
> poet. But the poems I write which are specifically issue-based tend not to
> be as publishable as I
> would like. As you say, it raises many questions. Can politics make good
> poetry? Alternatively, can
> good poetry ever not be political in some way?
>
> www.janeholland.co.uk
>
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