Words from the Brink E-Book

• Herausgeber: Arachne Press
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Seitenzahl: 78

Beschreibung

For Solstice Shorts 2021 we invited writers to respond to the growing climate crisis. From an exceptionally strong field we chose stories and poems that respond to the floods and droughts and fires all around the globe with tenderness, compassion, fear, grief and rage. Gaia is represented in all ther power and glory, and butterflies and plants sow seeds of hope, while other writers ask: How do we stop it? How do we survive it? And how do we live beyond the catastrophe on our horizon? Stories and Poems from Angela Graham, Ben Macnair, Cath Holland, Cath Humphris, Cathy Lennon, Claire Booker, Corinna Schulenburg, Diana Powell, Elaina Weakliem, Emily Ford, George Parker, Jane Aldous, Jane McLaughlin, Jared Pearce, Jessica Conley, Jill Michelle, Julian Bishop, Karen Ankers, Kate Foley, Katherine Gallagher, Kelly Davis, Lesley Curwen, Lisa Clarkson, Lucy Grace, Lucy Ryan, Lyndsey Weiner, Mandy Macdonald, Michelle Penn, Natascha Graham, Rachael Chong, Rob Walton, Robert René Galván, Samn Stockwell, Savannah McDaniel, Simon Brod, Stevie Krayer, Tara Willoughby, Tim Dillon, Vanessa Owen, Xia Leon Sloane.

Leseprobe

Contents

Introduction

Love Letter To The Earth

Potted Plants

Apocalypse

When Describing Gaia

Eunice Newton Foote

The Stars, Unfixed

The Last Lioness

Touch

Because I Have Been Complacent About Climate Change

Note To Self

Chronoflight

After This

These Days

Glacier, Calve Slowly

After Before

The Flooding

Mr King Has Decided To Pursue Other Avenues

Betty Always Sees Herself From A Distance

She Notices The Giant Grate Tilted

Views Of Greenland From Seat 39A

The White Boat

Erosion

Recharting The Territory

Memory Of Snow

Mr McGregor’s Seedlings

Humidity

Yellow Brimstone

Weather For Politicians

This Rewilding Wind

Occupy Frogs

For Sale. One Planet. Well Worn.

Flood Warning

The Year Of The Tree

Now And Then

Dominion

What The Natterjack Toad Teaches Us

Asteraceae

retablo for the deep ocean

The Rain

We Are Beach People

The Inescapable Irony Of Protective Packaging

Spring

Icarus

Volunteer

This Is What You’ll Get

The Undertaking

Gaia Theory

PROFILE SERIES 832/1: Planet E¥338-ф

The Things That Work

Words

From The Brink

Introduction

Cherry Potts

This book is the seventh Solstice Shorts anthology, and represents the writing for the eighth Solstice Shorts Festival. All our festivals have a time theme, and generally are held at least in part, in Greenwich, on the Prime Meridian. This book may seem a little tenuous in its link, but the original call out was for time is running out, a response to the climate crisis, but that was a terrible title, and once the submissions started arriving, the new title, Words From the Brink, took form. Not so much catastrophising, as marginally hopeful – we can step back.

Words from the Brink is also the third in a series of anthologies loosely connected by the concept of Maps and Mapping; again, the link is circumstantial – where are we headed?

I was concerned that I would be inundated with end-of-the-world scenarios, and was haunted by a memory of a luridly illustrated double page spread in a (probably Marvel) comic that I read in primary school, which went something along the lines of Some say the world will end in fire, Some say in ice.

Cheerful stuff, and a strange way to be introduced to the poetry of Robert Frost!

Our versions seem to err towards drought or flood, but this is not a pessimistic book. It is filled with wonder and excitement and laughter (if often helpless and sardonic) at the glorious and vulnerable world we inhabit and her apparent capacity to thrive despite our depredations. But make no mistake, we know that seeming rejuvenation is false.

This book is a warning and, perhaps, a cry for help, from a very angry Gaia, who is prepared to take matters into her own hands, if we won’t. It is also laced through with hope and signs of recovery, even in the post-apocalyptic scenarios envisioned by some writers.

More than one contributor thinks aliens could make a better job of caring for our planet, with a slightly despairing field report, and a brutal auctioning off of our very dubious assets. Seeds are sown deliberately and accidentally, children and animals treasured, signs of decay noted and fretted over, and escapes planned.

Here at Arachne we take our impact on the environment seriously, we know books aren’t the greatest for the world in terms of power and water consumption, so we use wood free paper for our books, and recycled stationery and paper in the office, which is always used on both sides before being recycled again.

We use plastic free packaging, as do our printers, and we reuse every bit of packaging that comes into the building that is big enough to hold a book – so if your copy of this book arrived in bubble wrap, it has been round the block at least once already. Our electricity is already 100% renewable, and we are in the process of having solar panels fitted.

When our computers/phones give up the ghost we donate them to a local reuse and recycling charity. It is unquestionably not enough, so we urge you all

Do SOMETHING, while we still can.

Turn off that light, turn off that tap, turn down that heating; reduce, reuse, repurpose, recycle; plant a tree, protect the bees; write a song, a poem, a story that can reach the people who need to hear.

Shout about it. Protest!

Everything may yet be all right, but only with your help.

Jane Aldous

Love Letter To The Earth

Dear Old Bod,

ancient blue dot, wiser than the lot of us,

fragile as the most fragile, tough as old boots,

clods, we’ve trashed our own paradise,

turned nature on its head.

I can barely look at your smouldering lungs

and swollen arteries.

As every year turns, every solstice, every season,

I love you more fiercely, in all your raw, mucky,

translucent, charming magnificence. I want you to exist

until the sun burns you up and we all explode into stars.

All I have is my plot, where wild flowers run riotously

through crops.

And hope in the face of all hope that nature’s beneficence

and human good sense will be enough.

Jared Pearce

Potted Plants

She’s grown

the amaryllis so

tall it legs

across the counter,

trumpet bell

blossoms ringing

their glory

and devastation.

There’s nowhere

to pull the stool,

swing over

and plop down,

and not get hit

by six blaring

hearts honking in my face

about the end

of times, valves

full or half or closing

closed, cup

mutes calling

the final turn

in our footsore

race, still miles

from a finish.

Kate Foley

Apocalypse

‘Thanks to our viewer who sent

this wonderful sunset photo.’

The weatherman doesn’t say

‘taken at 6 am today’.

Whitehall says

‘no panic’ so

got up this morning,

scratched our armpits,

climbed in the shower,

kissed the kids,

time to go.

Used as we are

to ‘climate change’

they call it,

and now the piercing frost

of stars at night

is hidden in the glare

of our inferior suns,

we never see the outraged universe,

just, but never kind,

thundering down the galaxies

to wipe us from its mind.

Emily Ford

When Describing Gaia

buxom is the first thing they say

 it is in their nature,

they are in hers:

the cirrus and nimbus surveying

 her great rolling quilt,

the way her long locks of hair

tumble

and

tumble into rapids

 in the West

  her rice staircases

   bulging into pregnant

         cherry blossom

             in the East

it is in her nature

she takes the dawn

in her arms

finds its heart with her lips

takes it between her teeth

    thrusting with her island hips

 here come those

entitled males

 those Titans, gods and men

 who will not find the heart in the sky

 who will not see her lips,

 or the teeth she bares,

 will not understand the whittled warnings

 of her tides

her sighing redwoods

 her screaming cracking plates

 they will plunder her flesh

 drill into her bones

she will give

                   give

                        give

 everything they take

                   take

             take

Emily Ford

Eunice Newton Foote

Dropping babies from our bodies like

mic drop

big as moons

relentless as light

these boons we bestow

so did you know

  Eunice (can I call her that?)

wrote: an atmosphere of carbonic acid gas

would give to our earth a high temperature

in 1856

1856   1856                    1856            1856 1856           1856

     1856            1856                          1856  1856   1856

                   1856             1856

                          1856             1856

                                        1856

and after the obligatory

SHUT UP, WOMAN

a man (I forget his name)

repeated her, and was applauded

hold onto your wombs ladies,

this is where it gets old

and tired

this happened again

and again

and again

and again

and while the planet is on fire,

we clap and we clap and we clap the men.

Elaina Weakliem

The Stars, Unfixed

The hissing of the water pump wakes me up in the middle of the night, and for a bleary moment, I grope through the sheets, trying to find the soft shape of your back. When the bed next to me turns up empty, I sit upright, panic clanging the primal alarm bells at the base of my skull.

I reach over to wake up your mother – and there you are, curled right up in her arms, your head resting on her collarbone. The two of you cling to each other unconsciously, your tiny hand pulling at the strap of her shirt. She rolls onto her back, bringing you up to her chest.

The water pump’s hiss turns to a faint gurgle, and I scrub my hands across my eyes, falling back onto the mattress. The room hasn’t started to show even the faintest signs of dawn, which makes me want to check the time, to see how long we really have left. The digital clock on the dresser is blank – the President made good on his promises and cut the power grid to most of our county yesterday. Only the water – what’s left of it – is still running, thanks to the solar panels I installed to power the neighbouring irrigation systems, back when the threat of running dry loomed large, but unbelievable, on the distant horizon of the future.