Curses

One of our writers in residence, Jacqui Stearn, shares a new poem and reflects on the deep challenges of parenting in the climate crisis

Image credit: Uljana Maljutina

Image credit: Uljana Maljutina

This is a belated final August blog, a month when my focus has been on our present-time response to the Anthropocene.

The sonnet that came out of taking the last line of the preceding (unshared) sonnet for a swim in Lake 32 is, Curses. My hope is that it resonates with readers as we each grapple with our personal response to Code Red for Humanity.

Curses

Undo harm? Release earth from our curses?

As fires lit the Mediterranean

I swam in cool, lake water, traversing

choices lurking, pike-like, and sustaining

confusion. Flipping between what I ought

and enjoying the frisson of so what,

with the hallmarks of illicit love sought

blind to consequence, I swam on, nonstop

through second circuit, working hard to move,

resolve the dilemma, find solutions.

Dried off, got into the car and so drove

home exhausted to the news; attention

 

you must reverse Code Red, change gear,

avoid the fate our children shouldn’t bear.

 

I had largely written this by the August Bank Holiday weekend, although it needed revising to allow my voice more space in the sonnet.

Over that weekend, it was my son’s voice that I heard. We had one of those special stand-out conversations that can happen when wine is shared. He shared his despair about the future and the fact that he’s been fearful about the impacts of climate change since adolescent – he’s now thirty. His sense of hopelessness was painful to hear and witness, and I spent many days coming to terms with a sense of futility about any difference I can make for him – and his girlfriend. He was speaking directly to the last two lines of Curses.

I found a partial way through by crafting another sonnet. Sticking with the relay sequence it starts with ‘avoid the fate our children shouldn’t bear’. It ends with, ‘that having children simply isn’t right’, for his is the decision that this young couple has come to. I know that they’re not alone in making that choice.

 Come December, and the last month of my residency, we will know if and how the international community has taken the IPCC ‘Code Red for Humanity’ seriously. My sincere hope is that they have. How I will weave their decisions, Lake 32 inspiration and that last line into a final sonnet is a tension I will be holding until then.


Jacqui Stearn is the Dialect x Waterland writer in residence throughout April, August and December 2021.

Follow her on Twitter @StearnJacqui

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