During an interdisciplinary conference at the Geological Society, ‘Poetry and Geology: A Celebration’, the Society’s President Dr Bryan Lovell threw out the following challenge: ‘I hope that our poetry will help to establish true environmental conviction where our scientific prose has failed us’. Over the next year or so I plan to take up that that challenge by producing a new body of poetic work which will explore the geology of climate change.
I am grateful for the support of Grants for the Arts:
For information about the Arts Council of England visit www.artscouncil.org.uk
This site will be a record of the project: the field trips I go on, interesting articles I find, my writing process and the occasional poem. I’d love to know what you think so please use the comments boxes or send me a message.
Michael McKimm
For information about my poetry and details of events visit: www.michaelmckimm.co.uk
written in the rocks 
Miracle it does
Anisul Hoque
It was November 2007. My editor asked me to reach the cyclone Sidr hit coastal area of Bangladesh as soon as possible. We rushed.
In a village house near Sundarban, 2 kids showed us two small just buried graves and said, `Here lie two of our siblings. We all took shelter on a tree, held its branches, but two of our siblings could not hold the tree anymore and were washed away by the tide. We found their bodies later on.”
3 years later, I composed this rhyme:
SUNDARBAN
by Anisul Hoque (translated with Sara Akant)
child: oh mother, the sea-water is salty like a tear! why is it not calm like an eye?
mother: oh child, there’s a sea-cyclone in my heart as well, and you know why!
child: when the cyclone hits, does the sea become a monster?
it turns houses into ashes, drowns the village with its thunder!
everything floated away from us, including my dear brother
i couldn’t feel him loose his grasp while holding you, dear mother!
mother: i held the tree with one hand, held both of you with the other,
a tree can bear much torment, so it was meant to be our shelter!
child: we held you, you held the tree,
but how can we survive this rising, roaring sea?
mother, let’s leave the village! let’s migrate to the city!
and take the tree with us, in brother’s memory!
since all his books and toys have been devoured by the sea!
mother: but child, if we uproot the tree, it will only suffer,
so we must leave it here, to be our village’s buffer!
child: you’re right! the village is in danger, we must flee!
and forget about my poor brother, and the tree!
tears are falling, tears and tears, they make the sea grow rougher,
you may think tears are sea water, but the sea is much, much tougher!
Why is the title of this rhyme Sundarban?
Sundarban is the largest mangrove forest in the world, which stretches across the sea-shore of Bangladesh and West Bengal, India and protects the inland from sea-cyclones.
During the cyclone Sidr or Aila, Sundarban saved our mainland from the thrust of the wind and water. Many trees of the mangrove forest were uprooted, many tigers were killed. It embraced the strike by itself but it protected 160 Million Bangladeshis and 140 million Indians.
Sundarban is beautiful, serene, heavenly, the birth-place of Royal Bengal Tigers and it is the savior of million of human beings from the reverse affect of sea level rise due to global warming.
I have a question: why does everyone tell me to leave my two poetry awards off of my geology resume?
I’m not a geologist, so don’t really know the answer to that. I suppose some people think employers don’t appreciate ‘outside interests’. But lots – I hope – would embrace the creative impulse in their employees… Glad you’ve been enjoying the poems, thanks for your comments.
I truly do enjoy the poems