Response to Rise

Response to Rise: From one island to another

Response to Rise, is a cultural and arts engagement with the ecological catastrophe of our times, a poetic response to Rise: From one island to another, a film produced by campaigning organization 350.org.

In the video two young women poets, one from the Marshall Islands and one from Greenland, connect their realities of rising sea levels and melting glaciers. Kathy Jetñil-Kijiner and Aka Niviâna use their poetry to showcase the linkages between their homelands in the face of climate change. This video offers a glimpse of how large, and yet so small and interdependent our world is.

In July 2019, Bath Writers and Artists watched the video and were so moved by it that we screened it again, this following with readings of our own poems written as response—honouring, celebrating, echoing the indigenous poets. We created a kind of poetic ceremony, an experiment that we wanted to share more widely as part of Fringe Arts Bath.

Curated by Peter Reason peterreason.net working with Bath Writers and Artists bathartistsandwriters.blog and other local poets

Responding to Rise: From one island to another

Those involved in Response to Rise include

Ama Bolton (Bath Writers & Artists)

Andrew Lawrence (Bath Writers & Artists)

Conor Whelan (Bard of Bath 2019)

David Niven (Poet)

Dawn Gorman (Arts Practitioner & Poet)

Deborah Harvey (The Leaping Word poetry consultancy)

Dominic Fisher (Poet)

Eileen Anne Gordon (Bath Writers & Artists)