We are delighted to publish this year’s winning and runner-up entries to our annual poetry competition.
Winner: Relics
Furqan Mohamed
The Paris Agreement was adopted by 196 Parties at COP 21 on December 12, 2015, and came into force on November 4, 2016. Such international agreements and contrasting documents expressing climate change denialism have become bellwether relics to an entire generation. These matched poems use words from the introductory pages of the Paris Agreement and from a letter written by a climate denial organization to powerfully invoke justice in the pursuit of climate action.
Runner Up: Participation Award
Noah Easton
This piece was written in response to the historical, often painfully slow, reactions to man-made, carbon-related disasters. It expresses the ways that, eventually, humankind’s concern and compassion for one another wins out and the role each of us has had in deciding to participate in the kind of collective care that governs our world today.
There were many ways
We were responsible for counting the dead.
Altars.
Every plant was a shrine.
Every outlet, a ghost.
Until one day, that old factory for shoes bore metal instead of brick. The place no longer haunted.
Instead, it catches the sun.
Like the children outside with that small yellow ball.
***
But there is no metaphor for
The report
Outlining a body A small boy.
Asthma attack, they said.
A bad cough.
Small lungs up against smoke, smog.
A simple shame. A small boy.
***
One person.
Then two.
Then ten.
Soon, the streets were full.
***
The factory was the first to go. It took many hands.
Brick was easier to forget than bone.
