Artist Roger Hardy and I met to speak about working together, my reactions to his sculptural figures and my ideas for a poem and installation, addressing such an overwhelming and complex subject. I approached this piece not from the position of an eco-warrior or experienced campaigner, but as an ordinary human being, who like many, has plenty of environmentally unfriendly habits, but who can see the tsunami heading our way, and is totally willing to change, given the right provocation and guidance.

I drew inspiration from the recent ripples of resistance, especially the leadership of young people like Greta Thunberg, whose heroic and articulate activism feels like part of a wave that's building some momentum. I’d also been inspired by the bold spoken word poetry of Kate Tempest, who stands up where others hide, and speaks out the truths of the world.

Early on in my explorations, I had landed on the expression ‘sea-change’, as perfectly capturing the radical and fundamental shifts that would be necessary, to have any chance to turn around the current climate crisis. The first use of ‘sea-change’ in the English language was in ‘Ariel’s Song’ from Shakepeare’s ‘The Tempest’, and so the rich tapestry of connected ideas began to weave itself. All I had to do was appropriate and rewrite Shakespeare and that would be a fine anchor for the text….

I did a deep dive into research for this piece, swimming around in everything to do with the oceans and the climate crisis, collecting useful and powerful ideas, imagery and words as I went. Then between more concentrated work at the desk, I would take a head full of words, thoughts and sounds for air and a walk by the sea, let my mind get lost in daydreaming and the drifting associations of the different elements I had uncovered. The poem crystallised on these beach walks, in dreams and early mornings barely awake.

At one point I stumbled across the important figure of Heathcote Williams, political poet, playwright and environmental activist from the 70’s onwards, and author of celebrated epic poems such as ‘Whale Nation’ and ‘Autogeddon’. This gave me permission to consider a longer form piece, and the more I wrestled with the ideas and distilled my text, the more an extended epic structure seemed right for the scale of this issue.

- Rhett Griffiths

“Be the grit
that becomes Greta,
a girl, a pearl of our time.”