Sweeping the Dust

Writer and photographer Mike Hembury read Deborah Tomkins’ post on how grief and hope feature in the work of fellow ‘climate writers’, and shares a poem in response to his own research into these experiences under climate change.

960 words: estimated reading time 4 minutes 

Sweeping the Dust

For so long
I have been
Searching,
Sweeping the dust,
Hurting,
Hurting, big time,
Living alone

With you
In a world
Of wounds.  

People
Are not who they were,
I am not
Who I was.

And all the while
Blaming
Who else but myself,
Feeling shame
And bitter failure
While sweeping the dust.

I’m homesick.
But I’m still here.

I understand
That I am grieving
That we are grieving,
As our landscapes
Lose their meaning:
“Is this how you feel?”
Yes.

We are sick now.
Sick of watching
The world crumble and burn
Sick of
Sweeping the dust,
Witnessing
The reduction
Of our more-than-human
Earth
To the smoke and ash,
Algae and pollution
Of human dominion.
Filthy, defiled
By greed and lucre.

However
I want you to know
I am not
Submitting to despair.

I am sweeping the dust.

There is much grief work
To be done.
Much grief work
To share.
And much of it
Will be hard.
But we have
More than enough
To go around.

We are allowed to feel now

We give ourselves permission

To grieve. 


Our depths 

Are well-springs. 

Our tears

Balm,

Co-elixir.

We share the dust, our wounds,
Our denuded landscapes
And each sharing,
A seed:
Resilience.
Our job now
Not hope
But becoming hope

For worlds to come.

Close the valve

Hold the window open

Plant the seed

Sweep the dust.  

Grief and hope

This poem came to me while I was researching the topic of ‘climate grief’ for a longer magazine piece. I must say that it is a recurrent theme for me. I am a great believer in action, and the need to stay motivated, but I also think that it is vitally important for us to feel the immense sadness and loss that is increasingly part of our common experience on our wonderful planet. Despair can be immensely debilitating but, to be honest, I think it is also part of a broader awakening.

I was very heartened to discover a number of very moving articles, particularly:

• Hope and Mourning in the Anthropocene – Understanding Ecological Grief, by Neville Ellis and Ashlee Cunsolo
• How to keep going, by Emily Johnston
• The Best Medicine for My Climate Grief, by Peter Kalmus
• The Road to Resilience, from the American Psychological Association.

Explicit thanks are due here to Neville Ellis and Ashlee Cunsolo, who I hope will forgive me for turning their essay into something of a collage.  

Whilst looking into the topic of grief I have also been questioning the role of hope, and am indebted to Emily Johnston’s take on this, which is that our own hope, or lack of it, is almost irrelevant right now. Our job is to be hope, to embody hope, for future generations. A very powerful message.

I have also just discovered Rebecca Solnit’s book Hope in the Dark, which has been inspirational, to put it mildly. Rebecca distinguishes between the false hope of “it will all turn out alright in the end”, and the need to cast ourselves into the uncertainty of action:

“Hope is an embrace of the unknown and the unknowable, an alternative to the certainty of both optimists and pessimists. Optimists think it will all be fine without our involvement; pessimists take the opposite position; both excuse themselves from acting. It’s the belief that what we do matters even though how and when it may matter, who and what it may impact, are not things we can know beforehand.”



I was also greatly impressed by Carolyn Baker, in her interview with the Canadian Ecopsychology Network. She stresses the importance of accepting grief, of actually feeling grief, as a precursor to moving forward, and to feeling joy. She essentially posits that to feel grief is far better than its alternative, which is to remain in denial, and feel nothing.

My wild emotional journey this week into the depths of climate grief and the associated search for reasons to continue was rounded off in the most succinct way possible by Greta Thunberg’s speech to a demonstration at COP24 in Katowice. She managed to sum up my thinking in two sentences:

“Once we start to act, hope is everywhere, so instead of looking for hope, look for action. Then and only then, hope will come.” 

Find out more

You can explore the various sources that Mike mentions:

Hope and Mourning in the Anthropocene – Understanding Ecological Grief, by Neville Ellis and Ashlee Cunsolo, was published on The Conversation (4/4/18).

How to keep going, by Emily Johnston, was published on Medium (2/12/18).

The Best Medicine for My Climate Grief, by Peter Kalmus, was published by Yes! (9/8/18)

The Road to Resilience is from the American Psychological Association website. 

Rebecca Solnit’s book Hope In The Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities is published by Canongate (2004; updated edition 2016). You can read an extract at their website.

You can watch Carolyn Baker’s interview with the Canadian Ecopsychology Network.

You can see Greta Thunberg’s speech to the demonstration at the COP24 in Katowice earlier this month, and her address to the COP24 meeting itself and read the transcript published at Dagens Nyheter.

And of course, Deborah Tomkins’ post Grief, Hope and Writing Climate Change — where she brings in her own experience as a writer and that of fellow members of Bristol Climate Writers — is here at ClimateCultures. The post is illustrated by artist Perrin Ireland’s images from her graphic story Climate Grief, the emotional reality of global warming.

Mike Hembury

A writer, musician and photographer, with a regular column on climate change, whose novel, New Clone City (2018), features environmental themes in an urban setting.

Read More