On 23rd November 2024, in partnership with the Push the Boat Out Poetry Festival, Paperboats held a creative writing workshop and reading at The Pleasance in Edinburgh, entitled There Is A Tide. After a showing of the film ‘Seawilding Scotland’, people shared memories and experiences of our seas and its astonishing variety and fecundity of life that, sadly, is now so threatened by human activity.
The result is this ‘letter-poem’ to The First Minister of Scotland, calling for action. Voice upon voice, people will make a difference.
Dear First Minister
We are seeing the wonders of our seas and seabeds – puffins & kittiwakes, tuna and dolphins, seagrass and maerl – threatened by inattention, suffocating plastic, waste, ignorance, greed.
The waters are full of indispensable lives, from the barnacle beards of whales to the salty drift of plankton. We want the silence that comes when night descends and the gulls fall quiet; we fear the silence of absence. Of extinction.
We are powerful waves in the shape of human beings. We yearn for sewage-free seas, long for plastic-free seas.
We want to stand with you on the beach, in the shallows, in silt. Who knows – maybe one day we will feel the seagrass, cool and green, as it feathers the waters of the Forth and brings life.
We want to stand with you in the intertidal zone, vapour trails overhead, listening to the oystercatcher’s wild call.
In dreams we lie, unsilenced, on the seabed and whisper the ocean’s truth. Vital as our voices, the heartbeat of whales.
Mr Swinney, hear us. Hear them.
Protect the Oceans. Save the Seas.
We are concerned citizens who participated in the ‘There is a Tide’ creative writing workshop at the Push The Boat Out Poetry Festival, Edinburgh on 23rd November 2024, facilitated by Seawilding and Paperboats.
Download the poster of this letter here:
The event culminated with a reading by Roshni Gallagher of her poetry commissioned for the event.
1. Seagrass
Strange to think
of a subtidal
meadow where
waves gather
and pass
like clouds across
a wrinkling sky.
I tease seeds out
of the eelgrass.
Long green ribbons
where creatures hide.
Under my tweezers
each seed is a joy,
each worm, a surprise.
2. Oysters
I search my plot of beach for oyster shells
and count horse, saddle, native, pacific.
They click together in my hands each
the shape of my palm and singing
a different note, wood chime, rain fall,
castanet, when I drop them to the sand.
The back of each shell ridged like a wave
the colour of heather or pearl or a fife sky.
And I watch as two more girls comb the sand,
held in their own band of light, counting
out the day in shells and stones, leaving
no small thing unnamed or unturned.
Download a poster of this poem:
Watch the SeaWilding film below:
If you belong to an organisation that would be interested in hosting a Paperboats workshop and making your voice heard, please email hello@paperboats.org