The year is 2030. The sea levels are slowly rising and storms gather over a city, presumably Mumbai. A couple in love “unmindful of the world” and “lost in each other” find themselves caught in this maelstrom. Thus begins, Helly Shah’s poem, titled Ghar Khab Aoge? one of the seven poems, which are part of Love in the Times of Climate Change, a spoken-word poetry project that was kicked off on March 21, World Poetry Day and will end on May 7.
The project, a collaboration between the sustainability think tank, Council on Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW), and online spoken word platform, UnErase Poetry, seeks to “unpack varied experiences of climate change through the poets’ narratives of how the changing climate is affecting/altering our experiences of love, companionship, desire, nostalgia and other emotions in today’s world.”
Kartikeya Jain, Communications Associate, CEEW, who spearheaded this project, talks about the raison d’etre of Love in the Times of Climate Change. “We wanted science and art to come together,” he says, pointing out that using an artistic medium such as poetry to drive a sustainability message, helps mainstream thoughts and ideas. While the target audience of the research organisation, is the policy-makers, they turned to the medium of poetry because they “wanted the masses— youth especially — to be engaged,” he says.
