Angela Segredaki – Calving

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Angela Segredaki
Calving

It wasn’t one day
no dam gives way at once, no iceberg falls alone.
Hairline fractures learned the language of silence
long before the white necropolis knelt to salt water.

I learned where limits live in the body:
how love becomes tears with nowhere left to go
how promises rust through and grow brittle
how the heart becomes uninhabitable.

I believed in mitigation
windmills patient at the river’s edge
words storing light the way jars keep peaches
summer stacked for winter on a windowsill.

But weather multiplied in the house:
your anger warmed the room
my fear warmed it more
until frames bent, the doors forgot themselves
and the air grew too thick for lungs.

I charted myself like a coastline
blue lines erasing what used to be land:
the laugh I wore the way water wears stones
the softness I evacuated
as cities retreat from the tide.

Outside, the world was also leaving itself.
Permafrost unlearned its vows.
Peat released its centuries of dark sentences.
Birds redrafted the air.
Smoke inked cursive on the horizon.

I understood at last
that hope without action burns
fuel dressed as future
and chose the cold, exact truth:
love had grown past its basin
and would not go back inside its banks.

Papers are thin things, late-season ice
but the sound of signing is a calving
thunder in the fjords of memory.

Now I walk under a careful sun
learning what grows after fire
testing green on the ash-coloured ground.

Somewhere between the planet’s fever
and my own cooled breath, I say:

we are not punished
we are answered.

Adam Gianforcaro – Poem of Impunity

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Adam Gianforcaro
Poem of Impunity

In the Book of Revelation,
no one says sorry to the Earth.

Maybe this is what makes it feel
so authentic, spelling out

another disaster
tailored to the bystander.

One final resting place
from which to quietly bear witness.

Behold the story of what it means
to be a man. To be so undeserving

and still beg forgiveness.

Richenda Van Leeuwen and Bob Ward – Turning Green

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Richenda Van Leeuwen and Bob Ward
Turning Green

A cliché would have it that people can turn green with envy. Currently with climate change hard upon us, turning green is the wisdom of the age. What is called for is a state of consciousness where one seeks to live without overtaxing the resources of planet Earth. Moreover, it needs to become a community approach, fully accepted and well supported.
       How does one grow into this cast of mind? For me it’s been a case of a mild interest gradually becoming a matter of focussed attention. In the 1970’s my family were privileged to have the occasional use of a simple cottage in mid-Wales, Nant-yr-nele, that was so remote even the foresters no longer wished to live there. But we could roam the hillsides, dabble in streams, gather fallen branches to supply the wood-burning stove, indulge fantasies of simple living. About eight miles away the town of Machynlleth was within reach of our modest car bumping along rough tracks while avoiding sheep. At the edge of the town was an abandoned slate quarry.
       We discovered that in 1973 it had been taken over by a community of engineers and architects among others who recalled that they’d set out to act ‘as a testbed for experimenting with alternative types of technology in response to the 1970’s oil crisis and a growing concern about the environmental impact of fossil fuels.’ In 1975 the site was made open to visitors, and we went a couple of times, it proved so intriguing. Some people did find aspects rather way out. I overheard a man complaining to his wife in a section dealing with options for making human waste productive: ‘I’m not going to pee over our garden just to grow better cabbages.’ However, our younger daughter, aged ten, latched onto the overall message strongly, as she explains below. The Centre for Alternative Technology continues to flourish, with an emphasis these days on post-graduate environmental education.
       Not far from where we were living, the new town of Milton Keynes initiated a visionary scheme in the 1980s whereby developers brought in novel designs for thermally efficient houses. For a while the completed estate was opened to the public. We were impressed both by their practicality and style. This was a way ahead.
       Subsequently we moved from central England to a new home close to the East Anglian coast. Once there, we fitted economy light bulbs, lined the cavity walls, upgraded the double glazing and improved the roof insulation of the conservatory. Then in 2011 we installed solar panels upon our south facing roof, among the first in our neighbourhood to do so. These fed electricity directly into the National Grid, for which we got paid. Not only did this provide us with income, enough now to have covered the initial outlay, but we genuinely felt that we were aligning ourselves with the green cause. Currently a new estate is being built beyond our garden fence. Each house is being provided with an array of solar panels, that’s progress.

Bob Ward, Solar panels, e-car charger, and e-car, photograph, 2025.

       Our most recent change has been to switch from driving an elderly diesel to an electric car. We are pleased with it. A great advantage is that we can recharge it cheaply at home, using some of our self-generated electricity. The picture shows the car on our forecourt connected to the charging unit and the solar panels on our roof.

Bob Ward, Wind Turnbines, photograph, 2025.

       Turning to the bigger picture, on a clear day when we gaze from the nearby ridge that overlooks the North Sea, stretching along the horizon a dozen miles away are turbines like a troupe of graceful dancers whirling to the music of the wind. The underground cables that bring the electricity ashore cross local farmlands. Here is England trying to live up to William Blake’s description of it as a “green and pleasant Land”. (Introduction to his poem Milton)

Bob Ward, Norfolk Offshore Windfarm, photograph, 2025

Richenda Van Leeuwen adds her story:

       All four of us children were force-fed nature as soon as we could toddle, as our parents are both lifelong keen birdwatchers. So those long ago trips in Wales invariably involved winding down car windows – often in the pouring rain – to try and spot a then elusive Red Kite.
       But those early nutrients fed us well. As a 10-year old, I was struck by the small wind turbine turning on the roof of the Centre for Alternative Technology, and impressed that solar panels could provide electricity, even in such a rainy place. Although I didn’t realize it at the time, it became deeply imprinted in me and shaped things to come.
       Fast forward 30 years and I was offered the opportunity to join a global renewable energy investment firm to lead their work in emerging markets, across Asia, Africa and Latin America. I jumped at the chance, remembering my interest from long ago. While solar panels were still pricey, a new technology was beginning to illuminate the path forward – LED lights – which enabled a much smaller solar panel to be used to light up a home and provide basic lighting at a far lower cost than in earlier years.
       I was fortunate to be able to invest in and support philanthropically several emerging companies that were taking these innovations into parts of the world where communities lacked electricity. Also, I played an early role in developing a United Nations initiative focused on energy access that has brought solar power to hundreds of millions of people over the last fifteen years.

Richenda Van Leeuwen, Solar Panels, Central Bank of Kenya, Institute of Monetary Studies, photograph, 2023

       To me the most fulfilling part of this work has been to use solar power in remote health clinics and hospitals where the grid is unreliable in places like the neonatal health unit in Bo General Hospital in Sierra Leone. There, solar panels and batteries provide reliable power for the oxygen concentrators and baby warmers that help save the lives of premature and critical newborns.
       I am proud of my parents for many things, including showing us that even at 90+ years old you can make a difference. And also, not least, for (probably being at their wits end) planting valuable seeds in taking four rambunctious kids out for the afternoon to an offbeat small alternative technology centre on a very rainy day.    AQ

Philip Gross – Melt Line

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Philip Gross
Melt Line

On one hand: Let us sit upon the ground
and tell sad stories
                                  of the death of… (things
in general, the seasons.) On the other
let’s stomp,
                      let’s puddle-slosh
like toddlers, drop to our knees in it,

icky-fingered in the particular
wonder of new mud
                                    the melting snow
discloses. From sandpapery chill
to slush, to slump
                                in dark-dribbling scars,
earth wakes, feeling its body again,

cramped from long numbness: Spring
which is also
                        a slow un-forgetting
of impacted pains, a spillage
undigested, chunks
                                of tyre-tread ruts
incriminating as a fingerprint, rust,

wire, shrapnel; deeper, mammoth’s
death-throe,
                        last meal in its craw,
the plague bacillus, morning-after breath
of peat bog,
                        and the ancient sleepers
dragged out of their dreamtimes – what,

again? – and all the wounded histories,
stuck clockwork
                             of parade-ground strutting,
flags, flags, uniforms… And mudslides,
oh, and hunger
                            and the children of hunger
gazing at the roadside – they will not

forgive us – from the churned fields,
barefoot, mud-
                            coloured and mud-crusted
as if new-created like Adam all over again
just waiting
                     for the word this Spring breathes
into them, and what will they say then?

Leen Raats – When the levee breaks

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Leen Raats
When the levee breaks

We couldn’t grasp it. How the walls which
we so carefully constructed,
are not the safe fortresses we have longed for
since the day we were born.

So we recited our prayers
cradled children in trembling arms, trusted.

Only a few of us headed for higher ground.

When the levee broke
no one knew where to go.

Erik Vincenti Zakhia – Wave in Filigree

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Erik Vincenti Zakhia
Wave in Filigree

Erik Vincenti Zakhia writes: ‘I took Wave in Filigree in Amchit, Lebanon, where I live, in the afternoon, on a stormy winter day. I took the photograph with very simple equipment: an iPod touch 6th generation. I use this for two reasons. First, it is light and pocket-sized and second, also out of environmental concern. My philosophy is to keep the same electronic device as long as it is functional. I am fascinated by how the sea connects the entire world. Water forms a unity and offers a landscape that, until now, we have found nowhere else in the universe. We should protect and preserve the Earth, and the only way to do so is to build a global and sustainable peace between nations. In addition, waves are noisy and silent at the same time; they invite dialogue across cultures, reflection, and poetry. If we do not change our current model of development, they may also become a threat.’

Erik Vincenti Zakhia, Wave in Filigree, photograph, 2025.

Obiotika Wilfred – The Okay Stream System

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Obiotika Wilfred
The Okay Stream System

When Chioma turned fourteen, she began waking before dawn, not because the rooster crowed or the air felt cooler, but because the village borehole had collapsed again. Water followed no timetable. It belonged only to those who arrived first. She carried two yellow jerrycans—one intact, one cracked at the base—down the long, sandy path behind her mother’s shop. The government had promised solar-powered wells, piped water, and upgraded tanks. But promises evaporated faster than harmattan dew. At the stream, women formed a pliant, exhausted line. Some sat on stones, some stood with arms folded, some argued about who had arrived first. The water level had fallen so low the stream resembled a tired snake, thin and sluggish.
       Chioma bent low, scooped carefully, waited for dirt to settle, then poured again. The cracked jerrycan leaked as usual. She pressed her thumb over the hole and balanced it on her hip as she climbed up the slope toward home. It wasn’t the weight of the water that exhausted her—it was the weight of the expectations resting quietly on top of it. Her mother believed Chioma would become a doctor. Her father believed she would finish secondary school and ‘marry a sensible man.’ The teachers believed she was too shy to succeed. Chioma herself wasn’t sure what she believed. Then, one Saturday morning, while returning with half-filled containers, she saw something she’d never seen: a boy sitting halfway inside the abandoned brick well behind the mango trees. His feet dangled freely, swinging above the darkness.
       ‘Hey!’ Chioma shouted. ‘You will fall!’ The boy looked up with a slow smile.
       ‘I won’t fall. I’m measuring.’
       ‘Measuring what?’
       ‘How deep hopelessness can be,’ he replied, laughing.
       She wanted to walk away—boys who made poetic jokes usually brought trouble—but she stayed. She didn’t know why. His name was Okechukwu. He had come from the city after his mother had died. He spent most of his days around the ruined well, mapping imaginary tunnels, sketching underground caverns in a notebook.
       ‘Run away from what chases you,’ he would say. ‘Or build a deeper place for it to hide.’ They became friends. They talked about school, dreams, the future. She told him she wanted to study chemistry. He told her he wanted to design underground reservoirs.
       ‘What for?’ she asked.
       ‘So villages don’t run dry,’ he answered. The day he said that, Chioma felt something crack open inside her—not like the leaking jerrycan’s wound, but like a door. Months passed. The dry season pressed its palm on the land. The stream shrank to a muddy ribbon. Women fought openly. Children fainted in classrooms. Rumours spread that the government would ration water. Then Okechukwu came running to Chioma one afternoon.
       ‘I found something!’
       ‘What?’
       ‘A cavity under the old well. A pocket of groundwater. Not enough for everyone, but enough to start something.’ They returned with a rope and a bucket. They tested the depth, marked the sides, measured vibrations.
       However, their excitement was reckless. The first person Okechukwu told was a teacher. The teacher told the headmaster. The headmaster told the chairman. And by sunset, men in dusty shirts had measured, photographed, and declared the discovery ‘a community breakthrough.’ No one mentioned the boy who crawled into the darkness first. The village celebrated. Politicians arrived for photos. Water flowed again—not much, not enough, but some. Enough to taste relief. When Okechukwu complained, adults dismissed him.
       ‘You’re young. Let elders handle these things. Your name does not matter.’
       But it mattered to Chioma. On the last night before school reopened, Okechukwu stood with her at the river path.
       ‘Why does this world swallow quiet people?’ he asked.
       ‘Because quiet people rarely shout when the world steals from them,’ she replied.
       He looked at her for a long time, then said, ‘Promise me something.’
       ‘What?’
       ‘When you find your own water—your idea, your dream—don’t let anyone take it.’
       She promised. Years later, when Chioma became a hydro-chemist working in Enugu, she built her first model reservoir in honour of the boy who once measured hopelessness by climbing into a broken well. She named the design the Okay Stream System.

       And for the first time, water flowed without stealing anything from anyone.    AQ

Nathaniel Calhoun – negative buoyancy

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Nathaniel Calhoun
negative buoyancy

overlaid by a swarm in which we have poor representation
we feed solitude to narrative engines      honed on a narrow
range of grievances      passed-over junior officers rancorous
slouching or this moment in plank pose     tax their umbilicus
to a throttle point   |    we no longer move in murmurations
we are herded   |   termite towers emerge too close      to our
shelters      a lopsided world of dubious roofs     barely stable
on one wavelength    |   isolation vinegars unguilded minds
goiters in our math yield to an omni-potentiality      a star
furnace      yoked      to our laziness   |   hoarding     ravaged
inhalations    ridden past salvaging      compulsory huffs
before the baleen heave      our lungs fill with frothy blood
and the pressure gauge      doesn’t mean every being will be
crushed     hadal zones      piezolytes       water swims     un-
bothered through unbothered water     indigestible signatures
tempt vanta fish      toasted by lava tubes      in the crushing
trench     technicolour microns      lodge in sea turtles blurred
by a jellyfish sea       something’s always comfortable where
ever you stray     habituated      indicating   |    is there a name
for the point beyond which       we become negatively buoyant
and how far out must we go      to have zero chance of orbiting
earth   |   droplets in a deluge     breach     from the noise of
statistical insignificance      and burst      like a beached whale
from the great      unraveling assumptions      of every earlier
era   |   maybe in a smaller tribe      we might have lasted

Bryan R. Monte – Welcome to the Anthropocene!

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Bryan R. Monte
Welcome to the Anthropocene!

a 35% increase in atmospheric CO2
a 40% increase in droughts
a 40-50% decrease in oxygen levels in some tropical waters
a 50% decrease in total sea ice
a 50% decrease in live coral
a 15 to 20 cm. increase in sea level
and at least 120 amphibian species gone extinct
since 1950

a 56% decrease in marine fish
a 70% decrease in marine seabirds
a 73% decrease of all wildlife
a 75% increase in category 4 and 5 hurricanes
an 85% decrease in freshwater fish
a 250-300% rise in global warming
a 500% increase in oil extraction
and a 650% increase in coal extraction
since 1970

a 50% decrease in tropical forests
since 1980

polar glaciers showing consistent loss
since 2000

17 confirmed Arctic methane crater explosions
(each equal to a 10-ton TNT bomb blast)
since 2014

11 of the warmest years in the 176-year, world weather record
since 2015

micro plastics discovered in Antarctic snow
in 2022

a 75-year average, 1.5º C global, tipping-point, temperature rise confirmed
in 2025.

Welcome to the Anthropocene!

Sally St Clair – Everything Is Going To Be Alright

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