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Field notes from the 21st Century / A photo lyric

it’s hard to trust / the ground these days

  • Karen McCarthy Woolf
  • Fall 2021
Art by Sab Meynert
  • Poem
  • Violence

/rattle of a sieve	upstairs 
		 metal in a kitchen	a picture window 
			with views 		to wide and tended lawn

	a familiar wood pigeon, crows of course—elsewhere

	brash green squawks 
						of	climate opportunists, escapees

	a festival groans in the park (fenced in, monetised)
		
		helicopter blades chopping the wind so 
		all that industrious gossamer 
		spun 
		between valerian and honeysuckle 
		shudders 			
				and yes, its subtle geometries hold—
				

/air traffic has resumed
	 	white streaks across sky
			punctuated by intermittent barks, a noisy fly, that does
			eventually depart amongst 
	
innocent memories of 
			aerosol 			and squashy white bread		


/birdsong is ambient, occasionally identified on an app
			 soon to be rendered obsolete
/all this barefoot on the ground 
	earthed
	amongst the luxury of purely
			decorative plants, although no such thing exists

	
			
			only arrogant space			 that recognises
			only its own					 colonies

			only 				                 mundane taxonomies
							                        (not without utility or 
purpose
							                         but limited, yes)

/		an empty birdcage	hangs
						from the trunk of an old rose
	
	no bird has flown in or out		
	or attempted to nest 
	even though the little trapdoor 			hangs open       
									        like a tongue
			
			which propels my chain 
			of thought to yesterday, when I saw a GPS dog collar
				in the aisle
				only £12.99—so no dog might ever get lost
		or flee
		or dodge 	the stick
					
		with an endangered wife, the kids

/feet, toes, soles on clammy grass and clover		
	
	earthed by negative ions—
	a prescription from Sula, black woman healer
	who says it will ease the inflammation in my spine	
		
		and it does soothe, cools
					 as if I might 
	be under water, under sea, briefly rolling 
/it’s hard to trust
		the ground these days		

			though my Dad’s bequeathed 
	marigolds are thriving 
	now they’re free 
						from my absentmindedness

		
/trying to remember and simultaneously forget

  how seagulls
  congregate at the rubbish tip
	
		their greasy,  monochrome bodies huddled against red cliffs


 the stink of rotten this and that
			
	
			the sea edging closer
	
	while we watch men
	who name themselves Theo
				
	
	launch and burn	only to	disappoint  
	by coming back

						
					as the sea	must bear its lunar tide
	raise hurricanes	in defence


  • cities climate environment poetry

Karen McCarthy Woolf

Born in London to English and Jamaican parents, Karen McCarthy Woolf is a poet, broadcaster, and editor whose collection, An Aviary of Small Birds, was described as a ’pitch perfect début’ (Guardian); her latest, Seasonal Disturbances, explores climate crisis, migration, the city, and the sacred, and was a winner in the inaugural Laurel Prize. As a Fulbright postdoctoral scholar at UCLA, she was poet in residence at the Promise Institute for Human Rights, where her interdisciplinary research explores the relationship between poetry, law, and ecologies of space. This year she has been awarded an artist residency at the Institute Sacatar in Brazil for a collaborative project on sugar with architect Ed Holloway and musician and cultural theorist Zacharia Mokrani. 

‹Also in this Issue›
  • Reportage
Forest of Souls

Ruxandra Guidi

In Guna Yala, choosing Indigenous knowledge over capitalist climate interventions.

  • Intervention
  • Essay
Ways of Unseeing

Anna Badkhen

What does unpeopling a place permit?

  • Violence
  • Interview
asinnajaq: Loops of Time

Brannavy Jeyasundaram , Asinnajaq

The Inuk artist on the fullness of the Arctic, ancestral ingenuity, and the decisions that drive ecological loss.

  • Intervention
  • Interview
Tamara Toles O’Laughlin: The Climate Catastrophe Should Be Paid For By The People Who Sponsored It

Jori Lewis , Tamara Toles O’Laughlin

The environmentalist on dirty money, reparations, and the urgency of global solidarity.

  • Protest
  • Poem
Field notes from the 21st Century / A photo lyric

Karen McCarthy Woolf

it’s hard to trust / the ground these days

  • Violence
  • Fiction
The Lamentations of a Veteran of the Sand Wars

Chinelo Onwualu

When I was born, at the beginning of the 22nd century, the world was choking under the weight of devastating disasters. It took the climate wars to free us—from some problems, at least.

  • Intervention
unpeopled terrain playlist
  • Playlist
A Soundtrack To Issue 8

Across this issue, there is an emphasis on silence, not as absence of life but richness of survival.

  • Intervention

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