As a satellite event to the Poets for the Planet London Poem-a-Thon in partnership with Verse Aid, Bristol poet Caleb Parkin organised a local Bristol event the same day, on 8th February 2020.
We met to read poems, connect, discuss. To draw attention to the plight of our planet. To think of the different ways we address, process, grieve, and celebrate our world. We read poems by other poets we selected from collections and anthologies, including Pascale Petit, Carrie Etter, CA Conrad, Alice Fulton, John Clare, Rachael Clyne, and many others.
Many of the poets present, including Jinny Fisher, Caleb Parkin, Lizzie Welbourne, and myself, read poems of their own addressing ecology and politics, among other environmental topics.
With many thanks to Space 238 on Stapleton Road in Bristol for their hospitality (and the photos!).
Our mission was to go home and donate £5 to an ecological charity of our choosing, since we weren’t able to participate directly in Verse Aid. My choice was Rainforest Foundation UK.
Thanks also to Caleb Parkin and Poets for the Planet.
Hope to do this again soon!
GEOCENTRIC
Pattiann Rogers
Indecent, self-soiled, bilious
reek of turnip and toadstool
decay, dribbling the black oil
of wilted succulents, the brown
fester of rotting orchids,
in plain view, that stain
of stinkhorn down your front,
that leaking roil of bracket
fungi down your back, you
purple-haired, grainy-fuzzed
smolder of refuse, fathering
fumes and boils and powdery
mildews, enduring the constant
interruption of sink-mire
flatulence, contagious
with ear wax, corn smut,
blister rust, backwash
and graveyard debris, rich
with manure bog and dry-rot
harboring not only egg-addled
garbage and wrinkled lip
of orange-peel mold but also
the clotted breath of overripe
radish and burnt leek, bearing
every dank, malodorous rut
and scarp, all sulphur fissures
and fetid hillside seepages, old,
old, dependable, engendering
forever the stench and stretch
and warm seethe of inevitable
putrefaction, nobody
loves you as I do.
miranda lynn barnes 