Re: Versing the Damage - Notes from the Climate Journey.
Oxfordshire ClimateXchange is collborating with The Nail and Hammer and Tongue for a special extended issue 11 of The Nail on the theme of climate change. The issue will include a poetry cd and will be launched at an events as part of the Sunday Times Oxford Literary Festival event on April 2nd, at which we will invite contributing poets to perform. Hammer and Tongue is Oxford's Slam and Performance poetry collective, and host of the UK's best poetry slams. The Nail is a performance poetry magazine and the written partner of Hammer and Tongue.
The Nail 11 aims to inspire a deeper engagement with climate change from many angles. It's ingredients will be drawn from themes from the Climate change creative writing workshops, combined with writing on any aspect of climate change, spiced with edited articles, and served with illustrations and photos. Get cooking!
Contribute to Re:versing the damage : Notes from the Climate Journey
All contributions welcome for this special edition - both experienced and new poets. Climate change may be in the forefront of or deeply buried in our hearts and minds but we all have valid contributions to make and voices to be heard.
Photographs and illustrations wanted
If you would like to submit your work to illustrate sections of the magazine, please contact
sophie@the-nail.co.uk for more details. You might want to check out the themes below for thematic guidance, but all contributions welcome.
Timescale
Please submit poems of no more than 150 lines (including spaces) to sophie@the-nail.co.uk, or post to The Nail, Hammer and Tongue, 16B Cherwell Street, Oxford OX4 1BG by 1st March 2008.
Themes
Please find below a selection of themes to inspire and get you thinking. These will be headings used in The Nail 11, but as always we welcome diversity and thinking outside the box so please feel free to
submit poems about climate change even if you don't think they conform to any of the themes suggested!
Some themes to explore....
You might want to take a look at the different info articles for stimulation, or you might have your own ideas. Background info from the workshops, including links to articles and further sources of inspiration, can be found here.
* Self as element
Imagine we are the nervous system of the world, we can speak for ice that's melting..for species..for snow turned to rain..for the river that's bursting at the banks..the field that's being parched by drought
year after year. How would we feel? What would we say? See the background info for more details.
* Floodscapes of the interior 
a) Pick an image of flooding and see what feelings it brings up. Eyes closed. Let yourself be flooded by those feelings, what does it look like? feel like? and write a piece based on this experience.
b) The myth of "The Flood" has been variously described in different cultures at different times. What would you take with you on an Ark as the waters begin to rise?
You might want to explore John Goto's Floodscapes exhibition, or see the photos of Oxfordshire flooding from July 2007.
* Vision 20:20 - a view of the future
Imagine it's the future where the impacts of climate change are hitting hard. Whether it's the weather, resource wars or an unrecogniseable landscape, what are your visions?
* Conjuring the Heroic 
Every age and culture has produced its own literature of the 'heroic'. From Cuchulain to Superman, heroes and heroines have served as inspirations in times of turmoil. Climate change presents a unique threat to life on this planet, and in meeting the challenge we may discover unsuspected depths of resourcefulness and imagination.
Conjuring the heroic can be playful or poignant, a direct appeal or a call to adventure, extraordinary or everyday. It might explore the energy you'll need to rise to the challenge - and what gets in the way.
* Notes from the future
A note, a fragment from the future to stimulate our present journey with climate change. What voices from the future can we hear today? What are they saying?
**Upcoming climate change creative writing workshops**
Tues 29th Jan 2008 7-9pm
Creative writing and climate change workshop led by Steve Larkin of Hammer and Tongue. Oxford University Centre for the Environment, Dyson Perrins Building, South Parks Road,
Oxford, OX1 3QY . See directions here.
£5, Please email jo@climatex.org to reserve a place
Tues 1st April: TEMPESTUOUS TIMES - Truth in the mouth of a Fool
A Writing Workshop on the theme of Climate Change.
What can we learn from the Fool and the "Lord of Misrule" in describing a planet in the thralls of Climate Chaos? What sort of mirror do we hold up to the world, and how do we ourselves appear in it?
A 2-hour creative writing workshop led by Joseph Butler and organised by Oxfordshire ClimateXchange as part of the Sunday Times Oxford Literary Festival. Further info for tickets , venues and times from
http://www.sundaytimes-oxfordliteraryfestival.co.uk/ 2 hours, evening time, around Christchurch College, Oxford.
Weds 2nd April - Oxford Literary Festival Launch of Re:versing the
Damage - Notes from the Climate Journey.
We'll be inviting contributors to The Nail 11 to read / perform their
writing. Time tbc, but in the evening, at Christchurch College.
