Envisioning a Brighter Tomorrow: Craft a Poem

This roundup of The Conversation’s environment coverage was first published in our award-winning weekly climate action newsletter, Imagine.

At school, I was told by my teachers I wasn’t allowed to take art A-level alongside biology and chemistry. I’ve always regretted listening to them. The crossover between the arts and sciences fascinates me. The space where creative thinking mixes with rational logic to problem solve in fresh and innovative ways. Many researchers agree that this is where the magic lies.

Here at The Conversation, I love finding new ways to communicate the climate story on a daily basis with expert insight from academics at the forefront of scientific discovery. So I was delighted to discover that others agree and spend their time researching these interdisciplinary connections – finding unusual ways to convey facts or interactive ways to engage communities and inspire action beyond the traditional, often dry, approaches.

In 2025, I started working closely with my colleague, Anna Walker, the brilliant senior arts editor at the UK edition of The Conversation. We have developed our climate storytelling strand of content and together we launched The Conversation’s Climate Poetry Award 2026, open to all academics based in the UK and Ireland. Entries close on September 1 2026 (11.59pm BST).

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So what makes a climate poem?

As poet Sam Illingworth, a professor at Edinburgh Napier University, explains, “poetry has a profound ability to help reframe global issues, taking obscure concepts and couching them in language that is both intimate and familiar”. Poetry can help personalise the problem and reimagine solutions.

And that is possible in just 17 syllables if you write a haiku, a form of poetry that originated in Japan in the 17th century. As Illingworth explains, every haiku, by definition, is about nature and carries a kigo, a single seasonal reference: a flower, a fruit, an animal, a festival that fixes the poem in one season.

The best haikus have a kireji, a cutting word or punctuation that pivots the poem. “That final ingredient, the turn, is the reason the haiku is so well suited to climate,” writes Illingworth. “A haiku builds a scene and then breaks it. Things are one way, and then they are another. Climate change has exactly that shape, which means the form itself can carry the science.”

A shift can happen in a moment – without degrees or decades. And just as the turn can focus on climate collapse, so too can it highlight recovery.

The essence of seasons

Jasmin Kirkbride at the University of East Anglia and Paul Chambers at the University of Bristol have been analysing how English-language haiku reflect the changing climate over the past 30 years.

“Haiku are about intense moments of perception,” they describe. While flying insect populations have crashed and habitats have been lost, the frequency of heatwaves, floods and other extreme weather have all increased.

“Yet, these changes emerge in a strange fashion,” write Kirkbride and Chambers. “It’s hard to write about nature’s losses, and writers tend to do so unconsciously. Rather than tracking population declines in concrete terms, then, the language used around certain species has altered, becoming soaked in grief.”

They also noticed fewer mentions of curlews or butterflies in haiku, and out-of-place seasonal signs such as snowdrops in December rather than February.

Climate is a communication challenge

In poetry, speculation might help us make sense of what it means to live with an uncertain climate future, according to Heena Dave, a research fellow at the University of Stirling.

“Scientific knowledge might give us the foundations for understanding what futures are possible, but speculation provides a means to explore possible futures,” writes Dave, who argues that poetry gives us a language to express what living through those futures might mean. “The power of poetry lies in making us pay attention to a sound, a place, an object or something changing around us.”

Dave works closely with school leaders as they explore their hopes, worries and uncertainties about climate change through the process of writing speculative poems. She has found that writing poems helps them process their complex emotions, memories and fears. “School leaders can then consider what might be demanded of their leadership as climate change increasingly affects their schools, communities, children and young people.”

So try jumping a decade ahead. Imagine how something everyday and ordinary might fare in a climate-changed world, start with what you notice and tune into your senses. Your words might surprise you.

A poem with atmospheric powers

One poem has had a particularly direct effect on greenhouse gas emissions.

For three years, In Praise of Air by Simon Armitage hung on an exterior wall above the busy A57 in Sheffield, UK, as part of a collaborative project with physical chemistry professor Tony Ryan. This poem was printed on a 20m-tall banner coated in titanium dioxide.

“When light shines on this photocatalyst, the electrons in the material are rearranged and become more reactive. They break the oxygen in the air apart to make two oxygen free radicals,” explains Joanna Gavins, a professor in English language and literature at the University of Sheffield. “In turn, these react with water to make peroxide, which oxidises pollutants in the atmosphere, making harmless molecules that can be washed away.” In those three years, the poem removed around two tonnes of nitrogen oxide – the toxic gas emitted in exhaust fumes which causes lung disease – from the surrounding environment.

In need of more inspiration? Check out some of our favourite climate poems and watch Sam Illingworth’s climate poetry masterclass.

You can enter your climate poem online here. Shortlisted entries will be published in an ebook by The Conversation UK in the autumn. The winner will be hosted for five days at the Little Goat Barn Writing Retreat, in the peaceful and beautiful countryside of the Vale of Conwy in North Wales courtesy of The Ruppin Agency.