paperboats

Climate | Action | Scotland | Writing

Paperboats Zine

The urge to explore and celebrate all the kinds of lives of Planet Earth is stronger than ever, but the environmental and ecological crisis demands we also lift our eyes, and our voices, to species extinction and habitat loss, to what is happening to the forests and hills, the rivers and seas, our streets and gardens. The writer’s instinct to pay attention has never been more vital. Literature can help us to see the natural world – and our place in it – differently.

Poetry

Sàl (Brine)

Is fuath leam, ged as gràdh leam sàl –
’s cruinnichte ann gach deur mo shliochd,
is mi fo sprochd air luime creige

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Memento Mori

Crescent o cork, new moon, owld
moon, bracket, comma,
oppen or closed speech mark

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Thank you Too

The thing is there was this young man
who saw me in Arlington Place picking up litter –
snickers-duo from amongst the daisies and sticky-willy.

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NOBLE In context, I RILE

Art Gallery – Orange paint
Be then non-be, that is extinction.
CLIMATE Justice – Climate Justice is unavailable in your region.

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Water

‘Parched’. adj. of land. Extremely dry. Excessively thirsty.
Carbonated natural mineral water. Warning – pressurised

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Honesty

The air is thick with ghouls and gunpowder.
Scour the scruffy verges, the rash of nettles,
rampage of brambles, the carpet of creeping ivy.

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Ox-eye daisies in the sunshine

Field Notes

We began wanting their names; the weeds, small accidents of anemochory (sounding so like the name of a loch, but meaning only windblow).

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Scottish Mountainside, snow on the peaks, very rocky with copper-coloured sparse vegetation on the lower slopes.

Mountain

Look at the mountain
and you will see how the grass,
on stormy nights,

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Bare branches of a walnut tree against a clear blue sky.

The Walnut Tree

I planted you beside the fence next to the field
that stretched green to the River Glass before
the storm that claimed the barn roof

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