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National Poetry Day partners with charities for environment theme
National Poetry Day (NPD) is collaborating with Greenpeace and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) this year to promote its environment theme.
The annual poetry visibility campaign, which takes place on 6th October, focuses on encouraging audiences to enjoy, share and write poems of protest and praise about the natural world.
As part of the celebrations, Greenpeace is to launch a climate poetry competition open to people of all ages, while NPD will be taking over the RSPB’s social media accounts, creating posts celebrating local language and dialect, and its connection to the environment.
Meanwhile, Waterstones Children’s Laureate Joseph Coelho will be launching his first campaign with Poetry Prompts, in partnership with BookTrust.
As the London Borough of Culture 2022, Lewisham school children will be encouraged to write poems about the environment and launch a billboard campaign of their work.
Poet Francesca Beard collaborated with We Are Lewisham to produce NPD primary school resources, which are available on the charity’s website.
“A poem uses the ordinary words we use every day, in a special way, to get closer to our wild and wonderful world, a world that exists separate from, and often behind, the words we use,” she said. “A poem makes spaces in between words so that we can reach towards a moment of presentness with nature. Poems help us to sense fresh air, clean earth, and connect with the green song of the trees.”
Lucy Macnab, co-executive director of Forward Arts Foundation, the charity that runs National Poetry Day, said: “There’s a long and rich tradition of poetry responding to the natural world, and poetry has tremendous power not just to rhapsodise about beauty, but also as an unparalleled tool for social change. Our focus this year is to provide audiences an opportunity to sing out about their natural spaces, and also to advocate for their protection and long-term sustainability.”
Full details and resources can be found on NPD’s website.
