Authors for #ClimateVisionaries project

Sjón on our Climate in Crisis

A poem for the #ClimateVisionaries Artists' Project for Greenpeace

by Sjón

is it worth months of hazardous travel? to see what happens when I pour it into that other ocean. we can’t know otherwise.

Sjón

Sjón, Author and contributor to our #ClimateVisionaries Artists' Series

p r o g r e s s

the third and last night the stranger stayed with us

she said as a warning:

 

“on the other side of the land I crossed to get here

lies another ocean

a smaller sea than yours but more salty.”

 

she licked her lips as she said it:

 

“don’t go there”

 

*

 

I watched as he pushed the silver flask

under the surface to fill it up 

with few mouthfuls of seawater

 

“why? and is it worth months of hazardous travel?”

 

“to see what happens when I pour it into that other ocean. 

we can’t know otherwise.”

 

a necklace of bubbles 

escaped from the flask’s slender body 

as liquid replaced air

As we begin this critical new year in the fight against climate change, Greenpeace is giving over space on our channels to authors and artists working within the climate crisis. Acclaimed author Lauren Groff prompted artists and thinkers to write essays and art about climate change for us, and so every day this month we’ll have a new piece from that project that addresses, in some form, what it means to create in the midst of this crisis. The forces fueling climate change have the most powerful networks in history pumping out their devastating propaganda at unimaginable scale. It’s going to take everything we have from all of us – imagination equal to the task – to create the climate we’ll need to stop the crisis.

We need these voices and these visions, but they won’t be enough. We need you, too. We encourage you to check back on the Climate Visionaries Artists’ Project every day to see what’s new, and to join the conversation by sharing your work on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram and tagging it #ClimateVisionaries.


Sjón

By Sjón

Sjón is a celebrated Icelandic author born 1962 in Reykjavík. He won the Nordic Council's Literary Prize for his novel The Blue Fox (the Nordic countries' equivalent of the Man Booker Prize) and the novel From The Mouth Of The Whale was shortlisted for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. His latest work CoDex 1962, a novel in three books, has been called an "extraordinary performance" by The Guardian and "a show of virtuosity" by The New York Times. In 2001 he was nominated for an Oscar for his lyrics in the film Dancer In The Dark. Sjón's novels have been published in thirty five languages. He is the president of Icelandic PEN and lives in Reykjavik with his wife and two children.

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