For Christmas, my mum received a book of poems called Coracle by Jane Clarke. This tiny, beautiful collection contains too many gems to list here, the vast majority focused on the natural world.

One of the collection is – at first glance at least – very different. With permission from the poet, I am sharing it here.

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Morning Ireland

20 March 2023, IPCC Summary Report

Every chair in the waiting room
is taken; mostly young mothers
with toddlers and babies.

The radio’s a background buzz;
fossil fuel emissions, 1.5 degrees,
species extinction, rising seas.

We’re each of us lost in our own
thoughts until a little girl’s voice
cuts through the torpor,

What’s a time bomb, Mummy?
Her mother glances at the rest
of us and takes a breath:

It’s something that will be
dangerous, darling, if it’s not
dealt with before it’s too late.

But when is it too late? her daughter
persists and now we’re all listening
to hear what her mother will say.

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The IPCC is the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, designed to ‘provide policymakers with regular scientific assessments on climate change, its implications and potential future risks’.

Irish poet Jane Clarke is the author of three poetry collections and two poetry booklets.

Her three collections were published by Bloodaxe Books, The River in 2015, When the Tree Falls in 2019 and A Change in the Air in 2023.

All the Way Home, a sequence of poems responding to a First World War family archive in the Mary Evans Picture Library, London was published by Smith|Doorstop in 2019. 

Coracle, a limited edition booklet of ten poems responding to biodiversity loss and restoration was commissioned and published by MoLI, Museum of Literature Ireland in 2023.

Originally from a farm in Roscommon, Jane now lives in Glenmalure, Co. Wicklow. Jane received the Ireland Chair of Poetry Travel Award 2022. 

In 2016 she received the Hennessy Literary Award for Emerging Poetry with three poems from The River. She also won the inaugural Listowel Writers’ Week Poem of the Year at the Irish Book Awards 2016.

(Info taken from the poets website – Jane Clarke Poetry)