Two poets and climate activists, Aka Niviana from Greeland, and Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner from the Marshall Islands, teamed up to write and perform the poem Rise in the fjords and glaciers of Greenland, with the help of glaciologist Jason Box who travels to Greenland every year to take measurements of how fast the ice is melting there. Greenland loses 300 billion tons of ice per year, and as a result, Pacific islands including the Marshall Islands are disappearing under the sea.
“This science is uncontroversial. But science alone can’t make change, because it appeals only to the hemisphere of the brain that values logic and reason. We’re also creatures of emotion, intuition, spark – which is perhaps why we should mount more poetry expeditions, put more musicians on dying reefs, make sure that novelists can feel the licking heat of wildfire.”
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